Locations received yesterday early morning (10 August) revealed that Clement had left his residency in Senegal and was heading ESE over the south-western corner of Mali! He was still actively migrating when transmissions began at 0200hrs and appeared to have been migrating throughout the night. He had stopped by 0600hrs when had travelled 450km ESE from Foret Diambour. Although just inside the north-eastern tip of Guinea, Clement is only 200km (122 miles) form Bamako, the capital of Mali.
Clement appears to be skirting the closed forested zone to the south, and the area he is in is still just inside the semi-arid zone. It is, however, criss-crossed with watercourses which drain water from the high rainfall zone to the south and south-west. Many of these flow into the headwaters of the River Niger, which flows north-eastwards through Mali and into the southern Sahara Desert before turning east then back south in a huge arc into Nigeria. This massive flow of water from the humid south-western corner of West Africa forms a verdant strip in the otherwise barren desert, and is vital both for the humans who farm the Inner Niger Delta and other seasonally-flooded parts of Mali, and the millions of migrating birds who either winter there or use it on passage. For an account of the area and its importance to migratory birds, check out ‘Living on the Edge – Wetlands and birds in a changing Sahel’ by Leo Swarts, Rob Bijlsma, Jan van der Kamp and Eddy Wymenga.
Share this page