Wildlife to see in São Tomé and Príncipe in January
4 spectacles at their peak in São Tomé and Príncipe in January. Wild animals only: no zoos, no wildlife parks, no hunting. Open São Tomé and Príncipe in January in the interactive calendar for listening times on the day you pick.
At their peak in January
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.
Turtle nights on São Tomé — Praia Jalé, Praia Inhame and Morro PeixeSurf on a black-sand beach, the scrape and thrown sand of a green turtle digging, her breathing, and the forest behind the beach: São Tomé scops owl, frogs, the squeak of fruit bats in the coconut palms. Quiet beaches without engine noise — the south is the end of the road.
More: São Tomé and Príncipe all year · January along the whole flyway