The Gambia - January 2024 - Day 6 - Kotu Creek and Tanji Beach

We met Yankuba at the appointed time, he is definitely quite punctual. He may have in fact slept in the car rather than going home as he had said he would, which might perhaps explain why we had stopped to offload the Senagalese chair at his house the previous evening, something we wouldn't have needed to do if he had been heading back there after dropping us off. Regardless, he seemed to have recovered which was good news.

There was another problem however - the creek was stuck at low tide and was non-navigable, a recently created sandbar at the beach was preventing water entering the mangroves and filling up the creek. It was either that or the creek had filled up and the water could not empty due to a sandbar but either way, no boat trip. We should have got in the car and gone straight to one of the nearby sites like Brufut Woods, but instead we agreed to bird the local area. 

Red-cheeked Cordonbleu

Splendid Starling

African Golden Oriole

Common Bulbul

Squacco Heron

So, Kotu it was then. To be fair when you look at the creek on a satellite view it is really really short, so perhaps we didn't miss much unless it has good photographic opportunities. I will never know, but I have to say that our birding walk - massive - was a worthy substitute. We were out for over four hours, all the way along the creek and then bia a boardwalk onto the golf course, and then to a reservoir and along what is known as the Casino Cycle Track via a pond for what was actually our largest list in terms of species diversity with 67. We had Black Crake, White-faced Whistling Duck, Caspian Tern, African Sacred Ibis, Northern White-faced Owl and Green Woodhoopoe at a ruined hotel, African Golden Oriole, Yellow-fronted Tinkerbird, African Grey Woodpecker and three species of Sunbird on the Golf Course and a lot more besides. Despite the huge amount of development which continues at the time of writing, the whole area is simply teeming with birds. The Golf Course was particularly good, with a flowering tree that attracted loads of birds to feed. It was so good that here is a little map.

 Northern White-faced Owl

Senegal Coucal

The whole loop was nearly four miles, and we returned to the hotel just before lunch. Yankuba suggested we take a break, as is normal for birding in the tropics, who wants to bird in the heat of the day when activity is low. We figured we would have a couple of hours off, but no, three and a half. Clearly yesterday's issues remained. At this point, whatever works for him. So Mick and I had a nice chilled out lunch at the hotel for an hour or so and then decided that we would go birding without him. It was hot for sure, but nonetheless we did another three miles around broadly the same area and managed to find a few more species for the list including Crag Martin, Red-chested Swallow and Black-headed Paradise-Flycatcher.

At half three we met Yankuba again and tried the creek - no change. The suggestion of going somewhere in the vehicle was first met with resistance but we persisted, even showing Yankuba where on the map it was and how it couldn't possibly take more than 30 minutes to get to (which of course he knew - I've no idea why he no longer wanted to take us where we wanted to go). Anyway we prevailed, and so off to Tanji Beach we went. This is mentioned in the Gosney Guide as being decent, and we knew that it was a new habitat for the trip it would surely add new birds. In short it was great - there is a fishing community on the beach, with traditional boats landing catches of small bait fish which are then dried on racks on the shore. The area stank to high heaven and there was a grim amount of rubbish, but I guess life comes first around here. As well as the birds I tried to capture the scene.

West African Crested Tern

Grey-hooded Gull

Western Reef Heron

Greenshank

Senegal Coucal

We walked about a mile up the beach and down again, alongside shallow coastal tide-surge lagoons. There were waders on these lagoons, and Egrets, and along the shore were vast numbers of Grey-hooded Gull, along with a few Lesser Black-backeds, Little Tern, Caspian Tern, Sandwich Tern and West African Crested Tern. Some Pink-backed Pelicans flew past with an Osprey and overall it was just another really birdy location. We stayed here until the sun set and then made our way back to Kotu in heavy traffic.