MOUNT MOCO, Angola — “Another one incoming,” shouts ornithologist Michael Mills to his colleague crouching a few meters away on the flanks of Mount Moco, Angola’s highest mountain. “Oh heck, it’s gone over the top.” The small brown bird with a pale breast and ginger crown had already twice bounced off a mist net strung between two aluminum poles and nearby bushes along a narrow, slippery mountain path flanked by bracken, grass and shrubby sand olives. Mills and University of Cambridge evolutionary biologist Gabriel Jamie had captured the bird’s mate and were hoping to trap him too. Jamie plays a recording of the bird’s distinctive call, a series of high-pitched whistles and trills. Within minutes the male bird returns and is trapped in the net — but only for an instant: he escapes through a hole. The Huambo cisticola is a small insect-eating bird that feeds and lives on the edges of Afromontane forest patches. It is most often seen in places like Mount Moco and the nearby Namba Mountains. Image courtesy Michael Mills. Gabriel Jamie (right) and Michael Mills set up a mist net on Mount Moco to catch Huambo cisticolas. Image by Ryan Truscott for Mongabay Protecting a unique and dwindling habitat The site of all this activity is a patch of restored Afromontane forest growing above the village of Kanjonde, at the foot of Mount Moco, in Angola’s western Huambo Highlands. The birds the two scientists are trying to catch are Huambo cisticolas (Cisticola bailunduensis), a species…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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