What birds live in the Gambia?

05/02/2020

I decided to broaden my horizons outside of what the university offers and popped along to one of the sessions held by Bangors ornithological society.

What I noticed, that was really informative, was before the weeks talk commences members of the group are offered the opportunity to mention any rare or interesting bird sightings they’ve seen locally during the week.
One person reported seeing a snow bunting in Anglesey that apparently usually lives further up north and another spoke about some black caps (one with a geolocator tag on) that may’ve come from Germany, as the leader of the group mentioned he knew some research was being carried out on them there. 

This week’s talk was given by Holly Page and centred around her visit to The Gambia.

She spoke about plenty of the common birdlife that you would expect to see there including species like the pied crow and red-billed hornbill.

Not only was wildlife discussed in depth, but the locals and lifestyle out in Gambia as well.
“Che the birdfeeder” has capitalised on a piece of chained off wasteland where he- for a small fee- puts out some water and birds flock in for you to observe.
It was emphasised that it isn’t food that draws birds around you in the Gambia, its water.

There’s a birdwatcher’s association information centre and from here you can hire a licensed guide that takes you round to the back of the centre where there’s a feeding area and pond. Some species Holly saw here included; black-capped babbler, red-billed firefinch and several pigeon species such as the red-eyed dove.
You can do a similar venture in Abuko nature reserve where guides go out early in the morning, prior to visitors, to find where the birds are, this really maximises the amount of species that you’ll see. Species seen here included; green and violet turaco and several bee-eater species such as swallow-tailed bee-eater and blue-cheeked bee-eater.

One aspect that Holly picked up on was the disregard some locals had toward the environment. Litter is a big issue there. Spaces behind the streets would have big expanses of rubbish piled up.

Holly also pointed out how the guides have a lack of binoculars (or the binoculars they do have are old and of poor working quality), which makes their job 10x harder.

Although listening to someone’s travel experience was fun, I didn’t find this talk to really affect my career choice massively (other than making me want to travel even more!) as it wasn’t really a specific talk about an organisation or research stance, more just a birdwatcher’s guide to The Gambia.