Wildlife spectacles in Liberia
7 spectacles through the year, ordered by when they peak. Open Liberia in the interactive calendar for the map and listening times.
First-rains frog chorus of the Liberian forest zoneThe heaviest rains on the flyway coast produce some of its loudest amphibian nights — reed frogs, running frogs and tree frogs in every roadside pool and rice swamp, with thunder rolling in from the Atlantic.
Marshall and Mesurado wetlands — Monrovia's mangrove roostsThousands of egrets and herons settling into mangrove roosts on the edge of the capital, waders on the Marshall bar, mangrove crackle, and from the Farmington river islands the pant-hoots of the rescued chimpanzee colonies at dusk.
Sea turtle nesting on Liberia's beachesA leatherback's long sighing breaths and flippers throwing sand on an empty Atlantic beach with surf and, behind, the forest's night — a sighting spectacle first, but the breathing of a two-metre animal beside you is a sound to keep.
Lake Piso — wintering waders, terns and the mangrove lagoonTern and wader roosts on the bar where the lagoon meets the Atlantic, mangrove creek sound in the northern arms, surf on Robertsport's beaches and, at night, fruit bats and frogs from the forested shore.
East Nimba Nature Reserve — the Liberian side of Mount NimbaBat emergences from the disused iron-mine adits below the Nimba ridge (a full-spectrum recorder finds far more than the ear), chimps and hornbills in the remnant forest, and the wind on the grassland summit.
Gola Forest National Park (Liberia) — hornbills, picathartes and pygmy hippo countryHornbill wingbeats like distant trains, the whooping of yellow-casqued hornbills, chimps and colobus, and the near-silence of a picathartes colony arriving under a boulder at dusk.
Sapo National Park — pygmy hippo, elephants and the deepest forest in West AfricaPrimary Upper Guinea rainforest with nothing man-made within a day's walk: casqued hornbills, chimps, Diana monkeys, the whistles of duikers, elephants rumbling at night, tree hyrax, and the full insect and frog layer of a forest that has never been logged.