Important bird records from two expeditions to the Upper Guinea Forest of Ghana

We present a list of birds with their relative abundance from 2000 and 2003 surveys of two sites in Ghana’s Upper Guinea forests. We recorded 111 species during the 2000 survey and 118 during the 2003 survey. We recorded several species considered nationally rare (e.g. Blue-headed Bee-eater Merops muelleri, Willcocks’s Honeyguide Indicator willcocksi, White-tailed Ant-thrush Neocossyphus poensis, Olivaceous Flycatcher Muscicapa olivascens, Grey-throated Flycatcher Myioparus griseigularis) or of global concern (Yellow-headed Picathartes Picathartes gymnocephalus, Green-tailed Bristlebill Bleda eximia, Rufous-winged Illadopsis Illadopsis rufescens) and include additional details for these species. We made the first bird specimen collections in decades of many species from Ghana, including several for which there were few or no previous specimens from the country (e.g. Blue-headed Bee-eater, Olivaceous Flycatcher, Tessman’s Flycatcher Muscicapa tessmanni, Rufous-winged Illadopsis).