Chris Packham Diary – Day 1

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Matt Smith

What follows is a 3-part account of the Chris Packham Gambia bird tour, that ran from 5th-8th Feb of this year (some of the party continued on for three more days at Makasutu, I escaped to Senegal). Needless to say it was a cracking few days, and for so many reasons: for the sheer number of different bird species we saw (147 at the last count); for enabling us to see so many different, odd corners of The Gambia; for getting to know a bunch of cool people; and, of course, getting to (figuratively) stand on the shoulders of two people with such a depth of knowledge of the Gambian bird life, and wildlife in general. Though they might not get mentioned that much, Chris and Malick are implicit in everything that happened, and everything I learned. I just wish someone had told me the birds got up so damn early…

6.30am found us huddled beneath a huge mahogany tree, squinting into the milky light of pre-dawn. We were at the entrance to the Abuko nature reserve, a vast tract of forest and open scrub and home to a renowned natural pool, excellent for spotting a good number of species. The night before the group of 18 had had a brief meeting with Chris at Bakotu where we’d sized one another up and been introduced to the inimitable Malick – prince of bird watchers and, as it turned out, a purveyor of heroic local knowledge. Thus it was that this straggly party entered the reserve, heavy with binoculars, heavy with anticipation.

Malick, Chris and the team at Abuko

The first thing we see is a dense line of nomadic ants, clustered into a fibrous cylinder across the pathway. They group together in this fashion to keep themselves warm, and to protect their queen, who is safe somewhere in the centre of the gathering. At first glance the ragged pile looks like leaf or vegetable matter, or even hair – which I guess is the point. The ants reportedly have a fearsome bite, so we leave well alone and continue along the path to the pool.

Along the route we stop in our own ragged cluster to seek out a violet turaco, hiding somewhere in the canopy. The thickening air is pierced occasionally by the bird’s gutteral call, and as it hops from branch to liana we try to fix on its movements. The profusion of growth around us is extraordinary – the sheer abundance of life, the riot of things, filling every available space. The canopy is one thing, but it’s down here at eye level and beneath that’s the most boggling: a labyrinth of entwined lianas and branches with huge buttressed hardwood trees rising from the meshed swarm of roots. There are breaks in this debauch of life, pockets of colder air where the massive concrete bunkers of termite mounds stand like centuries old sentinels. Yet even these conceal a frenzy of hyperactivity, worker termites at the coalface, keeping the place cool enough for her – lying at the refrigerated heart of things, sometimes up to 50 years old…

African Darter, Abuko pond (image by Chris Packham).

The pool when we get there, is quite a prospect – compact and surrounded on three sides by lush greenery; and perfect for watching birds – partly because of the natural stage set up, and partly thanks to the presence of a rickety two-storey hide from where you can observe the higher reaches of the distant palms. And so many birds, and so quickly… We see egrets, night herons, hornbills, wood hoopoes with young in the palms, a spectacular chestnut-breasted giant kingfisher (perched they are something, but in flight, oh my) barbets, a hammerkop, jacanas picking their way across the massive lily pads, just feet away from us, plus a dozen or so african darters, distant relatives of the cormorant, wings outstretched in the early morning sun. It’s an amazing sight, and so much to take in that you have to turn away occasionally to get some perspective. The group are scrabbling for their guide books (this extraordinary bible) (as an aside here, if Dave Allen ever offers you his guidebook, say no, probably best not to ask why – it’s to do with where he keeps it.), training their scopes or zoom lenses, off to my right someone is sketching the whole dazzling enterprise.

We do eventually tear ourselves away, and spend the next half hour or so on a weary walk to the rescue centre at the heart of Abuko. It’s HOT now, getting towards 35 degrees, and the heat lays across everything, puddling around your feet if you stand still for too long. We spot bee eaters in the tops of acacia trees, and the distant song of the bulbul, the only bird daft enough to still be active in this heat. We arrive at the rescue centre blistered and parched, to find an oasis selling cold drinks and small tubs of nuts to feed the resident vervet monkeys. Chris seems particularly adept at befriending them, getting a couple to leap for nuts held in an outstretched hand. The animals here are kept in good conditions, and there’s a true menagerie, ranging from red patas monkeys, through hyenas to a MASSIVE tortoise, that had dug herself an impressively deep hole to escape the heat. Something we could all have done with. Alas, we instead had to walk through the heat of the day back to the bus, air which seemed to congeal around us like a broiling active barrier. The stall holders at the entrance, when we finally arrived, seemed to regard us with sympathy and desultorily waved the odd carved owl at us and then, mercifully, left us alone.

Blue-cheeked bee eater at Abuko (image by Chris Packham).

That evening we went for the first of several walks across the fields that surround the Kotu stream. The area is legendary for the diversity of the bird life it supports, from a raft of kingfishers, to waders and even – on the more distant sewage ponds – a healthy number of whistling ducks. It is said (by Chris amongst others) that if you gave yourself a good run at it (say dawn till dusk) you might get to see 100 species from the bridge above the stream. One day, one day…

As we wound our way on the narrow paths that lace the fields around the stream, as well as looking at the numerous wood hoopoes and glossy starlings that graced the palms around us, and looking skywards for the kites and hooded vultures that rode the rolling levels, the first obstacle we had to negotiate was a herd of cows that very much wanted to get past us. Or rather we were the obstacle they had to tackle. As five became 10 became 40 or more, it was clear that this was no small herd either – mildly panicked laughter soon became shrieking alarm as the huge-horned beasts strove to get round us by any means possible. There was no malice, but that’s a ton of animal. With big bloody horns! Thankfully we managed to let them by without much more than the odd blush and booty from stepping into the sunken rice pits.

Belligerent companions on the path...

The sewage ponds, when we arrived were alive with activity. Now this may sound like a disgusting place to be spotting birds, but remarkably there is no evidence of sewage at all (save the odd brightly painted sewage truck), and the insect life is of such a density that it’s a natural spot for birds to congregate. There were squadrons of swifts flying low over the ponds, peeping patrols of stilts, plus massed ranks of creeping cattle egrets. I shall never think of sewage farms in quite the same way after seeing this fount of life.

A black-winged stilt prowls the pools... (image by Chris Packham).

Our final assignation was with the elusive painted snipe, a bird I was reliably informed was a ‘lifer’, the kind a true birder dreams of spotting. We’d crossed the road by now, and were on a ridge between the flats behind the Badala Park hotel. Malick had gone ahead to see if he could hear the muted call of the snipe, or spot its legendarily skulky lope as it picked for insects and grubs in the hard tufts of grass. See, the painted snipe, despite it’s name, isn’t exactly a colourful beastie, and has the perfect markings for hiding amidst grass and burnt soil; and it simply doesn’t want to be seen. So there we are, once again in our traditional (and by now exhausted) shabby column, all peeking through tired eyes, looking for a creature that has no wish to be spotted. Ocassionaly a faint cry of ‘there!’ would go up, only for the damp disappointed follow up of ‘no, it’s a coucal. Again’ to filter out. Malick was knee deep in grass by now, straining eyes and ears for the evasive wee creature but to no avail. We called off the search, promising to return another day, better armed and less exhausted.

Gambia Chris Packham tour – 2010

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Matt Smith

Chris spies a small bird in the middle distance

Well, I’ve recently returned from four fantastic days on the Chris Packham birding tour in The Gambia. We dragged ourselves through thorny acacias in forty degree heat – heat even the local owls avoided, skipped around marauding cattle in the lessening light of evening, and ran the gauntlet in the noisome charm of the fishing village at Tanji, and all this to get a look at some birds! But such birds: painted snipe, long-tailed nightjars, blue-bellied rollers, white-faced scops owls, splendid sunbirds… 148 species in total. 148. One might search for a lifetime in the UK and not get to that total; we managed it in four days.

I’ll publish some more detailed accounts of the trip over the next couple of weeks, for now here are just a couple of images to whet the appetite.

The boat trip on the River Gambia. The masters consult.

A huge bull interrupts the peace...

The dusty rabble, near Kotu stream.

Birds at Mandina

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Matt Smith

There is a quiet magic at Mandina, a magic born of the simple pleasure of being amongst abundant nature. It positively teems with life – the very land buzzing with a kind of thrumming undercurrent of existence. It gets into your pores. Any stay there is about seeking new ways of absorbing all that life around you: laying still in a hammock letting the humid air, thick with scents and calls, lay heavily on your body; walking through the ringing forest, feeling the liquid heat rising out of the ground, seeing flashes of colour, the glare of baboons. But it’s out on the water that the information comes through clearest – umoored for a moment, free from the pull of the land…

The River Gambia - Image by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/ankehuber/}Anke Huber{/link}

The tide was very low by now and the mangrove roots with their shellfish passengers were almost totally exposed. You could see through the knotty mass to the great mudflats beyond, and hear the odd sucking and slapping of the shifting surface as the land exhaled in great warm sighs. Due to the low tide we had go out in a shallow bottomed boat which we picked up from the deck of the last floating lodge. The sun was already making its steady downturn and our pilot urged us on, saying that the birds were already beginning their journey home. As we made our way along the ever-widening tributary we could make out the high piping call of kingfishers and turn to see the afterglow of blue as one shot into the undergrowth, and we also spotted a sedate sea-eagle perched nonchalantly in the top branches of a mangrove cluster, eyeing up the river for food, or simply resting for the night. After a time we came to a part of the river were two tributaries met and we sat in a great sweep of river with the engine silenced.

A trio of bee eaters in The Gambia

Great massed ranks of white egrets and herons flew across the horizon in front of the glowing disc of the sun, wave after wave, sometimes as many as thirty birds in a flock, the silence broken only by the almost imperceptible beat of wings and the occasional muted croak. This procession continued for what seemed like ages, and the total count must have been well into the thousands – where they went is still a relative secret, but it is rumoured that there is an island somewhere out in the mangroves that sags under the weight of close to five thousand birds. In time this will surely be sought out and become a spectacular attraction but for now the very thought of it in all its spattered feathered glory is a joy to behold. Mangroves have shallow root systems and join together to share nutrients, small islands have been known to become dislodged and float out into the ocean, washing up on foreign shores many thousands of miles away. If one day the birds clasped their talons in unison and took to the skies might they not create a vast forested, flying island? Now there would be a spectacle…

Sunset, The River Gambia

After a time we were jolted from our reveries by our pilot who was exclaiming loudly ‘Goliath Heron! Goliath Heron!’ This massive stilted bird is one of The Gambia’s largest and a rare find. Unlike the other herons we had seen in their regiments and squadrons, this bird was solitary and elusive, preferring to stay deep in the mangroves. The heron, a beautiful mix of velvety purples and greys, was balanced in the top of a mangrove cluster blending almost perfectly into the greying sun-devoid sky; as we approached we again killed the engine and trained the camera on it. As if reading some avian script it rose gracefully from the tree and slowly flapping its massive wings flew low across the water to the opposite bank, where it once more sat atop a bound reef of mangroves. The pilot was laughing to himself, and he told us it was good luck to see a Goliath Heron. He asked did we want to continue on to see more of the river but the sky was darkening and to be frank we were full up, engorged by all this effortless beauty. Instead we turned for home, leaving Goliath in peace.

Sunset, The River Gambia Photo by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helen61/}helen.2006{/link}

Later, as we turned to leave the encampment, the moon was full again but lower now and we could pick it out through the dense branches of the mango trees. Maybe it was just the fatigue but somehow, just beneath the surface of things, it was possible to sense the minute tremors as the insistent tug of gravity returned the massive body of water to the parched mangrove beds.

If you’re interested in bird watching in The Gambia you can find out more on our birding pages on the Gambia website. Alternatively, you can download this PDF which features a checklist of all bird species in The Gambia – 569 of them!