Chronologically we are still in the first week of our holiday and have not yet been to Georgetown but the timing isn't really relevant. Our next trip out with Famara and Pax (the taxi driver) was to Tanji and the surrounding area. Tanji is another fishing village south of Gambia which you can smell as you approach,
The beach at Tanji, photo from Trip Advisor.
This was our first birdwatching trip to Tanji since our 2nd visit to Gambia back in 2002 and I was looking forward it it because it is by the sea so cooler and I like wading birds. First stop was Tujereng, a village a bit further down from Tanji we had a good walk round the reserve as the sun was coming up and had quite an impressive list to tick off, we've been walking round in the sun for a couple of hours now so we decided to head back on to the main road and stop at a bar for a cold drink before going down to Tanjji reserve. So it was 4 Sprites - it is usual that the guide and driver are included in drink stops, and if we were to have lunch they would be asked to accompany us too but for that they would decline and eat the staff food which would be given to them free as a gift for bringing paying customers to the restaurant - the exception to this was when Buba was with us at Stala - while he would quite happily have eaten the staff food we specifically asked him to join us.
We were sitting happily watching an approaching donkey and cart slowing ambling along the road, we then heard a rather loud scraping/banging noise and realised that the young boy guiding the donkey had become preoccupied and the donkey and walked into Pax's car ! !
We paid and headed back to Tanji, and began the walk through the reserve, we had not gone far when it became apparent that there were not many birds to be seen and it was extremely hot (by now it is about 12midday) I mentioned walking on the beach and was told that wasn't really an option nowadays (they suffer with coastal erosion so the beach had probably gone) we decided it was far too hot and went on to the next and final stop of the day Brufut wood, another place we had visited previously but with it being a forest you have shelter from the sun. We picked up the official guide (every Forest/wood seems to have one!) and set off. Gambia does not have the infrastructure of modern countries and the photo below shows that they don't have regular refuse collections.
We had realised by now that Famara had been looking at the 'ticks' in our book and was trying to fill in the blanks, while this was very thoughtful of him it did mean that we spent a fair bit of time staring at particular trees because that was where his target bird liked to roost, personally I would have been happier wandering round the forest finding any birds, it doesn't bother me too much how many times we see each species. The target species on this trip was night jars and I'll be honest when we found it I was a little underwhelmed, I was only a couple of feet away from the bird but I still couldn't make out what I was looking at and even now when I know what it is it still looks like a san ache to me - if you were paying attention to a previous blog you will know what I mean by san ache!
Long tailed night jar,
We carried on round the forest and spotted many birds but didn't take too many photos. We saw another Verreaux Eagle owl and many other species mainly consisting of LBJ's or Little Brown Jobs which is how small plain birds are known locally!
Then it was time to go and thankfully there was a bar area where we could get a cold drink and wait for the taxi drive to wake up !
The guides had put a bit of a feeding/watering station round here so many birds were coming down for drinks like us, the following photos weren't taken here but show the species that we watched while enjoying a bottle of Sprite and they were taken by me at some point during one of our holidays.
Common Bulbul
Weaver birds
Yellow crowned Gonolek
I love reading about Gambia & seeing your photos but I'd much rather 'see than do! 'xx
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