Day 295, Year 5 A Magical Place
Date: Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Weather: Beautiful Day; Wind SE 20 am, 10 pm
Location: Moramba Bay, NW Madagascar
A baby lemur, a swallowtail butterfly as big as both of my hands, a Hoopoe bird, a critically endangered Madagascar fish eagle, and baobab trees of every size and shape imaginable . . . these were today’s finds here in Moramba Bay. After a wet dinghy ride in very windy conditions, we landed on a beach to start exploring shortly after 8 am. We had chosen this beach for landing yesterday and we had hoped to stop along the way to take photos of some amazing looking baobabs. The light just wasn’t right yesterday afternoon when we went that way and it was too wild and wet this morning to do much with cameras, but we did get a few photos. As we approached our landing spot we saw zebu wandering about in a flat area behind the beach. We wanted to try and find a path to walk to the next beach, so Ed and Lynne walked along the beach and Ed went over a cliff while Mark and I followed the path where we had seen zebu. Maybe we were hallucinating as we never saw another zebu or even evidence that they had been there. But we did find a fenced garden area with not much growing in it at the moment, a watering hole, and what looks like a home-stay with four or five tents scattered about. We walked around the bottom edge of the fenced area and found a path that would lead us over the hill to the next beach. Ed and Lynne joined us as Ed’s high path was a little too steep. We walked up a hill and down the other side. As we stood on the beach looking at what appeared to be wild boar tracks, Lynne spotted three lemurs in a tree on the hill we had just climbed down. As we walked that way, we all started taking photos just in case this group would not let us get as close as our other two friends we visited yesterday and the evening we arrived. As we got closer, one large lemur took off and leaped high in a tree further up the hill. We didn’t see that one again, but we did get photos of the other two-one very large and one that looked like a juvenile. When we got home and looked at the photos we saw that the one looked so large because she had a baby on her stomach with its little human-like hands wrapped around her back. So very precious!. After watching the lemurs for quite a while, we walked back over the hill to the garden and home-stay. Here we saw beautiful domesticated turkeys and I also did some Hoopoe chasing. This bird is found throughout Europe and Asia and most of Africa, but it was the first time I have seen it, so I went chasing to get a photo. At first I thought it was a small chicken as it was pecking at the ground as if looking for insects. But then I noticed that it had a beautiful crest on its head and I remembered seeing a photo of it in the Lonely Planet. This bird is ginger-colored with white and black stripes on its wings. As luck would have it, the bird was hanging around the bases of trees where there was very little light, so getting a good photo was almost impossible. And when it would fly low to the ground it was hard to see as the black and white stripes just faded into the surroundings.
We headed back to the Windbird and Constance and found that the wind had picked up considerably and we all got soaking wet on the way back. But it had been a successful morning so the salt-water drenching wasn’t such a big price to pay. When we got back and looked at our photos and discovered that we had seen a mother Coquerel’s Safika lemur with her baby, Mark and I just had to return to see if we could see it again. But our afternoon foray came up with zero lemurs. What we did see, however, made up for it. We saw Atrophaneura anterior, Madagascar’s largest butterfly. While we were watching it flit from flower to flower on a small tree (looked something like a dogwood) we could not decide if we thought it was a bird or a butterfly. It was just way too big to be a butterfly, as big as both of my hands, so that made us think it must be some strange bird. Mark called it a “bird-a-fly.” When we got home we looked in the Bradt Madagascar Wildlife book we have and found that what we had seen was actually a type of swallowtail butterfly whose closest relatives live in southeast Asia. The head and abdomen of this butterfly was bright red and the wings were black with white polka dots edged in red. Quite striking. We saw this on what we are calling Baobab Beach. It was a long beach with so many baobabs. When we left here, we headed back to the place where we had seen our first lemurs. On the way, we saw a majestic Madagascar fish eagle that looks similar to an American bald eagle sitting in the top of leafless tree. We stopped the dinghy and just sat and watched, taking photo after photo. It startled us so when it flew away that we didn’t really get good photos of it in flight, but it was such a pleasure to have this chance to watch one of these endangered creatures up close. We then returned to the beach where we saw lemurs yesterday and the evening before, but again there were no lemurs to be found. I did walk a bit inland and found blossoming bush with a beautiful sunbird. I then walked back to the huge baobab where we had seen the lemurs yesterday, gave it a big hug, and called it a day.
Tomorrow morning Ed and Lynne will head out with us again in search of more wildlife. The shores of this bay and its little islets just seem to be teaming with life. To us it seems like a magical place.
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| 100817 Day 295a Moramba Bay, Madagascar–Explore #3 Morning |
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| 100817 Day 295b Moramba Bay, Madagascar–Explore #3 Afternoon |
