Ghana Birding Tours
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Ghana must be the easiest West African country to travel in and thus gives relatively easy access to a very large number of West African endemics as well as good access to some star North African birds. Ghana has 180 of the Guinea-Congo Forests biome birds, including 12 out of the 15 Upper Guinea Forest endemics, 11 of which are of global conservation concern. These 180 species are West and Central African rainforest birds, some of them reaching as far east as the DRC/Uganda border, but most of them are found only with difficulty outside of West Africa, making Ghana a very convenient country for finding them. This little country also boasts 37 Sudan-Guinea Savanna biome birds; this biome is a strip of savanna just south of the Sahel of North Africa. It is also possible to access the edge of the Sahel itself within Ghana for sought-after species such as Egyptian Plover. Ghana boasts a 100 percent success rate for finding White-necked Rockfowl (Yellow-headed Picathartes), a fine representative of a completely West African family. Brightly-colored bee-eaters (such as Rosy Bee-eater), barbets, turacos, kingfishers (such as Shining Blue Kingfisher, Chocolate-backed Kingfisher, and many others), are rather conspicuous on any birding vacation to Ghana. Ghana is also the best of our birding tours for finding the spectacularly adorned Standard-winged Nightjar, which we look for in Mole National Park. Mole National Park is not only a very rich birding site but it also gives the opportunity of seeing African Elephant and a wide range of other African megafauna.
On our small-group birdwatching tours to Ghana we visit some of the country’s most famous sites and game parks. These include not only Mole National Park (Ghana’s first and largest protected area), which we’ve already mentioned, but also Kakum National Park with its impressive canopy walkway, truly famed among birders. Here we invariably see a plethora of amazing bird species. These can include Red-cheeked Wattle-eye, Blue Cuckooshrike, Congo Serpent Eagle, Long-tailed Hawk, wood-hoopoes, and a couple of species of giant hornbills winging their way noisily from tree canopy to tree canopy.
