An 11-day birding holiday to The Gambia exploring both the coastal region and upriver looking for specialities like Egyptian Plover and African Finfoot, 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. On this new itinerary, we not only explore the coast, as we have been doing on tours for several years now, but we will also travel upriver which provides the chance to look for specialities like Egyptian Plover and African Finfoot.

We start in coastal Senegambia visiting well-known birding hotspots such as Kotu Creek, Tujerang, Brufut and Kartong.  After three nights here, we move on to an inland base from where we can more easily reach the excellent locations of Marakissa, Farasuto and Sohm before heading upriver for four nights. From our bases at Tendaba and Georgetown, we explore the upper reaches of The Gambia river and its islands, and we take boat trips to go in search of the many riverine birds and animals.

Likely raptors include African Harrier-hawk, Shikra, Black-winged Kite, Osprey, Red-necked Falcon and Hooded Vulture, with the chance for other vultures and eagles upriver. Kingfishers are well represented, from the tiny African Pygmy to the enormous Giant 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. You can expect to see around 300 species on this tour.

You can read all about our 2024 and 2025 tours just to the coastal part of The Gambia here and here.

Not a tour, but you can read about our last trip upriver in The Gambia in 2019 here, here, here and here.