fieldherping.eu

Hi everyone !
So I went to Ghana this summer, the main goal was to find the king of beetles: Goliathus regius. We mainly focused our trip on insect, but managed to find some herp anyway

First some butterfly:




















And of course... The king:









Hope you enjoyed ! I plan to go back there next year (and I'll do more herping this time !)

Nice stuff with the insects. Herping-wise, the Bothrophthalmus is a great find. I'd love to see more photos of the trip.

Interesting stuff of a country I know little or nothing about, thanks!

Great to see more African herping ventures being posted! We also searched for Goliathus (and other Scarabaeidae) in Malawi but poor timing resulted in very few beetles being encountered and no Goliathus. Western Africa is definitely better to herp during the European summer that is for sure!

Would love to hear some more about the places you visited and a list of species you found during your trip.

For sure summer isn't the good season for beetles in Malawi, you had no chance to see any Goliathus albosignatus I think. The good period would be from january to february, and even in right season they are very difficult to find, as I said they only go on some specific trees where they meet to mate, and they stay very high. Without the help from locals who know the good spots, it's nearly impossible !
Even if it was the good season, we didn't see that many beetle. We stayed in the same place for the whole trip in order to setup traps etc... Beetling is not easy at all...
I don't want to reveal the location here, it's not a known locality for Goliathus regius, and it would be better if it stayed like this.
I'll try to do a list of the species we've seen (but I won't list butterfly or moth, we've seen hundreds of them !)

Yannick Francioli wrote:For sure summer isn't the good season for beetles in Malawi, you had no chance to see any Goliathus albosignatus I think. The good period would be from january to february, and even in right season they are very difficult to find, as I said they only go on some specific trees where they meet to mate, and they stay very high. Without the help from locals who know the good spots, it's nearly impossible !

We knew that before we went but as this was more an allround wildlife trip it didn't matter, we were still kinda wishing one would be found though...

Goliathus ! I'm jealous !

The Snakes are cool, but the beetles ... bäh!!!

Philothamnus looks great! Good photos and not so familiar species