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Although the other members of my family enjoy a range of outdoor activities when we travel together, I like to spend more time birding than they do. I especially enjoy staking out a spot where I can spend some quality time with my camera early in the morning.
On the second stop of our tour in Senegal, this was just
across the road from our lodging which was located on a narrow spit between the
Senegal River and the Atlantic Ocean. The tidal flat there, featuring a newly established
strip of mangroves, offered great opportunities to photograph a variety of
herons and other waders, as well as shorebirds, gulls and terns.
Most of the birds I saw at this spot were new to me, but
many of them were recognizable as counterparts to birds I’ve seen in North
America: A large heron nearly undistinguishable from our great blue heron, a
smaller egret like our snowy egret, and so on. Others were different from
anything I’ve seen, including the most numerous and noisiest birds on the
scene, spur-winged lapwings. These are medium-sized shorebirds with striking
black and white markings that call to one another loudly throughout the day.
On the way back from this spot one day, I had stopped to
watch birds in the trees around our hotel’s parking lot when I came upon the
most colorful birds of our trip, little bee eaters. They were bright green
above with a black mask, a vibrant yellow throat and various shades of orange
below. They were flying out from a low branch to catch insects--everything from
small wasps to dragonflies--and then perching again to eat.
In addition to the birding I did on my own, my family and I enjoyed
some memorable excursions dedicated to wildlife watching. One day we traveled
to the Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary in a van, along with a family of four
from France, a local guide and a driver. The highlight of that trip was a boat
ride to see the sanctuary’s enormous nesting colony of great white pelicans,
but we saw many other birds along the way, as well as some interesting non-bird
animals—west African crocodiles and warthogs among them.
Because I was interested in getting pictures, our guide
insisted I ride in the front of the van on the way back, and our driver even
stopped for me to get out for shots of some animals. (I don’t remember anyone
from our party complaining about this, although I wouldn’t have been listening
closely for that, either.)
Along the same lines, I benfited from the help of the guide
who drove a boat we rode in during our time in the Saloum River delta, which is
south of Dakar on the Atlantic. He would orient the boat just right, give the
engine some gas and then cut it, which enabled us to drift in quietly for
photos of birds among the mangroves. There our most memorable finds were an
elusive white-crested tiger heron and a goliath heron, the largest heron on
earth.
