Îles Ehotilé: fruit bats, waterbirds and mangrove lagoon
Straw-coloured fruit bat and other fruit bats roosting on the islands; herons, egrets, African darter, terns and Palearctic waders on the Aby lagoon. Parc national des Îles Ehotilé, Aby lagoon, Assinie, Côte d'Ivoire.
Best time: 1 Nov – 31 Mar (November to March). Where: Îles Ehotilé – boat from Assinie-Mafia / Etuéboué, Assinie – lagoon shore (Côte d'Ivoire). Time of day: Boat out about an hour before sunset for the bat emergence over the lagoon.
- Guide, ranger or boat needed
- Entry fee
- Binoculars helpful
- Sound 3/5
Open it in the interactive calendarSunrise and sunset listening times for the day you pick, and the map.
When is the best time?
Peak: 1 Nov – 31 Mar. November to March: dry season, calm lagoon, Palearctic waders and terns present
Active from 1 Jan to 31 Dec (all year) in a typical year.
Time of day
Boat out about an hour before sunset for the bat emergence over the lagoon; heron and egret roosts settle in the same half hour; waders on the flats at low water in the morning
- Waders on the flats: sunrise → 2 h after sunrise
- Bats & roost: 30 min before sunset → 15 min after last light
Depends on the tide: best around low tide. Check local tide tables.
What will you hear?
Fruit bats chattering on the roost islands and rushing out over the water at dusk, egret colonies bickering as they settle, terns and whimbrel over the flats, and dugout paddles in a mangrove-lined lagoon.
Binoculars?
Binoculars helpful. Bats stream over the boat at dusk; binoculars for the egret colonies and waders on the flats.
Where to go
- Îles Ehotilé – boat from Assinie-Mafia / Etuéboué — Six small islands in the Aby lagoon, a sacred site for the Ehotilé people; OIPR guides and community boats from the lagoon villages. Map
- Assinie – lagoon shore — Resort strip with boat hire; the lagoon side is far quieter than the beach. Map
How to go on your own, and what it costs
Landing on the islands is only with an OIPR guide and community permission (national park and sacred site). Cheapest legal way: bus to Assinie or Etuéboué, hire a village pirogue and pay the OIPR fee at the park post.
Cost: OIPR entry plus pirogue hire; check current prices.
Free or no-guide alternative: The dusk emergence over the lagoon can be watched and recorded for free from the public lagoon shore at Etuéboué or the Assinie lagoon side; only landing needs the guide.
Who runs access
- Office Ivoirien des Parcs et Réserves – Îles Ehotilé (park authority) — Guided pirogue visits
Field-recording notes
The islands are sacred and a national park — landing is by permission of the OIPR guide and the community, and the bat roosts are not to be approached on foot. A drifting boat off the islands with engine off is the way. The reported roost sizes are not well documented; treat this as a promising site to check with OIPR and local guides rather than a guaranteed mass emergence. Weekend jet-skis and speedboats on the Assinie side; weekdays are calm.
Sources
Similar spectacles
Straw-coloured fruit bat roost at 37 Military Hospital, AccraA continuous shrieking, chattering wall of sound from the roost trees over the hospital and the 37 lorry station, wing-slaps and squabbling as bats jostle, then the rushing of the evening emergence over Liberation Road. Pied crows and a few raptors work the edges.
Straw-coloured fruit bats over FreetownThe squabbling, squeaking chorus of a straw-coloured fruit bat roost and the wing-rush of the dusk emergence over a city — one of the great urban wildlife sounds of West Africa, if the colony can be found.
Fruit bat colony on the cliffs of Wli FallsA high, ceaseless chattering from many thousands of bats hanging on the cliff face beside the upper cascade, then the rush of wings as the colony peels off at dusk over the pool, all against the falls.
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.
The Plateau fruit bats of Abidjan — a city-centre roost flying out to the Banco forestA shrieking, squabbling wall of sound from the big trees of the Plateau administrative district, wing-slaps and jostling, then the rush of the evening emergence over the avenues and the lagoon bridges. The return at first light is quieter and more musical — thousands of bats settling and arguing over branches above the empty Sunday streets.
Bat hibernacula in the Mønsted and Daugbjerg limestone minesAudible squeaks and wing-flutter of hundreds of Myotis swarming at the entrances; on a detector, dense FM sweeps and social calls; tawny owls in the beech above; otherwise rural silence.
More: all spectacles in Côte d'Ivoire · bats · Côte d'Ivoire in January · Côte d'Ivoire in February · Côte d'Ivoire in March · Côte d'Ivoire in November · Côte d'Ivoire in December