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Birdwatching Trip Reports from the Gambia
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Before breakfast, Tony Todd (the other vidoe photographer) and I set off around the mudflats surrounding the camp. We had previously seen Mousebrown Sunbird here and having failed to get any video that time we hoped for more luck today. However, most birds seemed to be feeling the heat as much as ourselves and again we found much less activity than normal. We saw White and Snowy-Crowned Robin Chats sculking in the mangroves and there were plenty of small finches about, but apart from a solitary marsh sandpiper and a cardinal woodpecker which performed for the camera, there seemed much less bird activity than I can remember. Of course with some West African birds moving seasonally with the rains, we may just have caught them "In-between" seasons.
I noticed from that mornings video that some Yellow Fronted Canaries have a intermittent dark breast band. I can't find anything to state what this is an indicator of.
A leisurely breakfast for a change and then began the drive back to Banjul. We stopped at the road to Kemoto were we had often seen Grasshopper Buzzards but, you guessed it, none to be seen. However, this time I felt that we really were looking at the wrong time of the year. However, there were bee_eaters.
Rushing on our way again, the inevitable happened, the pot-holes were just too much for our somewhat ancient tyres. Fortunately we had a spare although its condition didn't exactly fill one with confidence that we would reach Banjul without bursting that too. But we did.
Overall, we had an excellent week's birding. Although we dipped out on some of the birds we had hoped to film, we still logged over 230 species. This shows the potential of the Gambia as a bird watching venue for our logging of what we saw was pretty haphazard as our real interest was in pictures and sound. I'm sure that someone on the trip "collecting" with us, would have ended up with a much longer list. Tamba and Solomon who were the eyes and ears of our outing, were extremely good and they spotted many birds that I am sure we would have otherwise missed. Their knowledge too of the bird calls was of very great help. I just wish we could have had video of all we heard.
This was the first time I had been in the Gambia at the beginning of October, and I suspect it was not the best time to have picked. The vegetation was so thick at the end of the rains, it was impossible to walk off the roads/tracks and also very difficult to see birds in the undergrowth. The dry season is magic because the birds are easier to see and the middle of the wet season before the undergrowth has grown too much equally marvellous with all the birds in full breeding plumage. Next visit is planned for February. I hope to have new excerpts from the video tape for you soon after.
There are still some copies of the video produced by OTUS Video on Birding in the Gambia available. It is a two part video with tape I. an introduction to birding in the Gambia, and tape II. a collection of some of the birds that one is likely to see. The two tape set costs £15.50 and can be ordered using the e-mail facility of the brochure page of this site, or by phone or fax to the hotel.
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Nigel Eaton-Gray
Nigel is the Proprietor of the birder friendly Great Tree Hotel in Devon.