Stephen Moss 

Birdwatch

We left London mid-morning, on our honeymoon at last. By late afternoon we were in Gambia sitting by the hotel pool sipping a cold beer, and watching birds hop around the carefully manicured gardens.
  
  


We left London mid-morning, on our honeymoon at last. By late afternoon we were sitting by the hotel pool sipping a cold beer, and watching birds hop around the carefully manicured gardens. We might have been on the Isles of Scilly, Tenerife or Mallorca, but we weren't. It was nudging 100 degrees in the shade, the birds were new and exotic, and we were on another continent: Africa.

If you haven't already guessed, our destination was the Gambia, that tiny West African republic just a six-hour flight from Gatwick. With only an hour's time difference, we didn't have to worry about jetlag, and spent one of the most restful and stress-free fortnights I have ever experienced.

We also, I have to confess, went birding. OK, so watching birds isn't what you would call a traditional honeymoon activity, but birding is so easy in the Gambia that you can't really avoid it. Fortunately, too, my wife Suzanne shares my enthusiasm and interest.

On our first evening, without leaving the poolside bar, we saw red-eyed dove, speckled pigeon and the aptly-named beautiful sunbird. A quick walk around the Hotel Kairaba gardens produced three species of glossy starling, and two local specialities: white-crowned robin-chat and yellow-crowned gonolek. These normally shy forest birds have become accustomed to people, and perched invitingly close, allowing us to admire their splendid plumage.

The next day, in the grounds of the hotel next door, the Senegambia, we added even more species to our "garden list". These included shrikes, parrots, and two species of kingfisher: the large, showy blue-breasted, and the tiny, jewel-like African pygmy, one of the highlights of the trip.

You could spend a fortnight here, never leave the hotel grounds, and still see more than 60 different species; while a couple of excursions on foot to the nearby rice fields, creek and forest would add another 50. So one morning we took a walk around Kotu Creek, where pied kingfishers hovered over the water, while flocks of bee-eaters gathered nearby. We also saw male northern red bishops, looking like giant red and black bumblebees, perform their extraordinary display flight.

That evening, we explored Bijilo Forest Park, a tract of original palm forest just a few minutes walk from the hotel gates. At first, we saw little but as the sun began to set, swallow-tailed and little bee-eaters treated us to stunning close-up views. A perched raptor turned out to be a lizard buzzard, which stayed put long enough for us to admire its plumage through our new telescope.

But it was at dusk, as we strolled back towards the park gates, that we enjoyed the most extraordinary encounter of all, when three tiny, bantam-like birds appeared on the path a few metres ahead. They were stone partridges, a shy and elusive gamebird which rarely ventures out of the undergrowth.

We wandered back along the beach, watching the sun set over the Atlantic, before enjoying a celebratory cocktail by the pool. A notice proclaimed that it was happy hour. Happy fortnight, more like!

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*