A 7-day short birding holiday to The Gambia exploring the coastal region south to the Senegal border, in conjunction with our friends from Oriole Birding.

The Gambia

The Gambia offers a great introduction to West African birding, easily accessible with good road and infrastructure. This tour is designed as a short bird-filled break, basing ourselves at the Senegambia Beach Hotel set in 20 acres of tropical woodland! We will take excursions from here to explore the surrounding area, to sites including Kotu Creek, Abuko, Tujareng, Pirang, Brufut and Kartong.

Likely raptors include African Harrier-hawk, Shikra, Black-winged Kite, Osprey, Red-necked Falcon and Hooded Vulture, among many others. Kingfishers are well represented, from the tiny African Pygmy to the enormous Great Kingfisher. Then there are turacos, hornbills and ground-hornbills, honeyguides, drongos, bulbuls and babblers, robin-chats, paradise flycatchers, sunbirds, bush-shrikes and helmetshrikes, glossy starlings, oxpeckers, widow birds and bishops, and waxbills and weavers. We will look for elusive species like White-spotted Flufftail and Verreaux’s Eagle Owl, and we will explore the river estuary, pools and shore for a variety of gulls, terns and waders such as White-fronted Plover and Painted Snipe.

We work together with local guides and in the last few years, we have seen over 250 species on this tour.