Wildlife to see in São Tomé and Príncipe in August
4 spectacles at their peak in São Tomé and Príncipe in August. Wild animals only: no zoos, no wildlife parks, no hunting. Open São Tomé and Príncipe in August in the interactive calendar for listening times on the day you pick.
At their peak in August
Obô forest dawn: São Tomé's endemic birds above Bom SucessoA dawn chorus made of species found nowhere else: the oriole's fluting, the thrush, the weavers' chatter, the giant sunbird's rattle from the canopy, speirops flocks; the croak of the dwarf olive ibis in the deep forest at Monte Carmo in the first light, and the scops owl's whistle after dark. Dripping forest, streams, no traffic.
Príncipe after dark: the scops owl described in 2022, and the island's endemics at dawnA fast, insect-like 'tuu-tuu-tuu' at about one note a second, often as a duet with the female higher-pitched, from the old-growth forest of the uninhabited south — a sound nobody had named until 2022. Before dark, the island's grey parrots screaming to roost; at dawn, the thrush, the thrush-babbler, the speirops and the Príncipe sunbird in a forest with no roads.
The Tinhosas: the only great seabird colony of the eastern tropical AtlanticA sooty tern colony of this size is a wall of sound audible from a kilometre downwind: the 'wide-awake' calls of over a quarter of a million birds, noddies' rattles, booby honks, surf on bare rock. From a drifting boat with the engine off it is one of the great seabird sound events of the Atlantic.
Humpback mothers and calves off São Tomé and PríncipeBlows, tail-slaps and the slap of a breach carry over a flat sea; a hydrophone from a drifting boat in September finds singing males at depth. From the headlands it is a visual spectacle against the surf; the islands are quiet enough that a blow is heard from the cliff on a still evening.
More: São Tomé and Príncipe all year · August along the whole flyway