Wildlife spectacles in Guinea-Bissau
6 spectacles through the year, ordered by when they peak. Open Guinea-Bissau in the interactive calendar for the map and listening times.
Chimpanzee dawn chorus in the Cantanhez forestsChimpanzee pant-hoot choruses and drumming carrying through the northernmost primary forest in Africa, colobus roars, hornbills' wingbeats and grey parrots' screeching over the oil-palm villages of the Nalu people.
Green turtle nesting on Poilão — Africa's largest rookeryA beach with hundreds of females digging at once: sand thrown against the vegetation, the long sighs of turtles breathing, flippers on wet sand, and surf — with the forest's night birds and fruit bats behind. Sacred island: no other human sound at all.
Bijagós intertidal flats — the flyway's second great wader wintering groundWhimbrel and godwit flocks calling over enormous intertidal flats with no engine noise for kilometres, tern roosts on the sandbanks, mangrove crackle at low tide, and the islands' own forest and village sounds behind.
Cacheu mangroves — West Africa's largest continuous mangrove blockThe full mangrove soundscape — fiddler crabs, mudskippers, snapping shrimp under water, herons and kingfishers above — in channels wide enough that no village sound reaches, with crowned cranes on the rice edges.
Cufada lagoons — wintering ducks and the heron roostWhistling ducks and garganey over the largest freshwater lagoons in the country, fish eagles, and a mixed heron and egret roost that fills the lakeside trees at dusk.
Saltwater hippos of OrangoHippo grunts and blows from a lagoon inside island forest, then the same animals walking past the village beach at night and surfacing in the sea in the morning — the world's only regularly marine hippos.