As humans modify native ecosystems with increasing frequency, natural habitats including forests are lost. Under such circumstances, secondary forests can increasingly be important to conservation of biodiversity at landscape scales. However, in East Africa, little is known about avian community composition in regenerating secondary forests. In this study, avian diversity of a regenerating secondary forest was assessed in Pangani, northeastern Tanzania, using point counts. Sixty point counts were conducted for a duration of 12 days in about 90 ha of the regenerating secondary forest. Thirty species were found to utilise the regenerating secondary forest, of which 12 are categorized as forest-dependent species, and 12 were forest visitors. Using the same sampling effort in the adjoining riverine forest, there were 42 bird species, of which 11 and 13 were forest-dependent species and forest visitors, respectively. These results suggest that the regenerating secondary forest provided a habitat for a number of bird species including forest-dependent species and a few intra-African migrants, and it is thus of conservation value, at least at a local scale. Maintaining such regenerating secondary forests can provide greater landscape connectivity for the survival and, possibly, dispersal of birds.

Homeothermic animals have regulatory mechanisms to maintain a constant body temperature in response to harsh climatic conditions. In low latitude areas near the equator, animals have adapted a coat to avoid strong UV rays, but a thick coat interferes with heat dissipation due to high daytime temperatures. Therefore, animals spend hot hours in cool shade or dens as the most common method to avoid overheating Alternatively, some animals cool themselves by bathing with sand, mud or water. Spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) are medium-sized carnivorous animals weighing about 45–70 kg, and aredouble coated. Bathing is a well-known behaviour in spotted hyenas, but it is not clear from natural historical descriptions whether their bathing is a heat-resistant behaviour. Here we report on two bathing observation cases of hyena and describe them with reference to the heat resistance function of bathing based on the time and temperature at which observations occurred. A wild hyena of a four-headed clan inhabiting Laikipia, Kenya bathed in a pool at around 18:00 h and 9:00 h in the dry season. The temperature at 18:00 h showed largest difference from the highest annual mean temperature. The bathing at 9:00 h in the morning was the time when the temperature began to rise. These observations suggest that hyena bathing may be a heat-avoiding behaviour. Bathing also has other functions such as parasite extermination, play and ambush hunting, hence more observations are needed in the future.