I left my rented car at the Club Le Calao, a pleasant bungalow-type hotel on the tip of the N’gor Peninsula, northwest of Dakar, a site with a reputation as an excellent seawatching point in Autumn. The hotel bar’s terrace offers a superb view of the open Atlantic, and there was a group of Swedish birders watching and counting passing seabirds. Among them was Niklas Holmström, whose excellent Seawatching in Senegal website.
I used as part of my trip documentation. During the short time I spent with them I saw a couple of Killer Whales, a Royal Tern, an Arctic Skua, and a Grey-headed Gull. The grounds of the hotel were filled with small birds: Firefinch, Red-cheeked Cordonbleu, Village Indigobird, Grey-headed Sparrow and Red-billed Quelea were all common, and a flock of Blue-naped Mousebird flew in and out from neighbouring gardens. You can see an excellent sample of the birds seen at Calao in those dates at Niklas’s webpage.


Huge male Spurred Tortoise

From N’gor I rented a 4WD at the airport, and I drove to the “Tortoise Village” of Sangalkam (see their website link ) , where a French foundation has established a reserve and breeding facility for the African Spurred Tortoise (Geochelone sulcata). This unique, huge, amazing tortoise was once common along a wide band running across North-central Africa, from Mauritania and Senegal in the west to Sudan and Eritrea in the east. Nowadays, wars and habitat destruction through overgrazing, together with excessive collection, have reduced its territory to scattered and often isolated populations, the main ones being in Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. The foundation’s main objective is to release as many tortoises as possible into the wild, once the right habitat conditions have been ensured..


Around 400 tortoises are kept separately according to sex and size, and bred selectively. Also, many formerly captive tortoises are recovered, either through confiscation by the authorities or donation by their owners. Keeping these tortoises as household pets has been a tradition in this region for centuries, and even today almost every home large enough to have a planted backyard or a garden has one. Unfortunately, ignorance often leads to wrong keeping and feeding conditions, which leads to malformations and disease. Most of these former pets are useless as breeders, and are just kept to give them the best possible living conditions.

This tortoise was kept as a pet for many years,..

At the end of my trip I visited the reserve of Guembeul, just 12 km from St. Louis, where a wild population of Spurred Tortoises live in 700 protected hectares of grassland, scrub and acacia woodland around a large lake. When detected, nests are dug out and the eggs incubated artificially to ensure a maximum of hatchlings, which are kept in controlled conditions until large enough to be safely released.
It is debatable whether these tortoises are truly wild, in the sense that they may have been displaced from other areas by man; however, I was thrilled to find one near where my car got stuck, once more, in the sand: the first non-captive one I have ever seen, and hopefully not the last. This reserve holds also a breeding program for Scimitar-horned Oryx (Oryx dammah) and Dama Gazelle (Gazella dama), both extinct in the wild in Senegal (and in most of Africa). Many of the specimens at the reserve descend from animals donated by the Saharan Fauna Rescue Center in Almeria, Spain.
The day after Noflaye I left the hotel and drove all the way north to St Louis. It took me more than one hour to leave the terrible Friday afternoon traffic in Dakar, comparable to the worst in Madrid. An additional four hour-drive took me through really pleasant towns and an excellent road, even by European standards. I arrived in St Louis at night, and found my way to Ranch de Bango, a delightful hotel located in a village nearby.

Vieillot’s Barbet

I liked the place so much that I didn’t leave it for the remainder of my stay. It’s a bungalow-type compound with a restaurant and an open bar around a large swimming pool, all surrounded by well-tended gardens. The food was superb (see its website here). The owner, a really pleasant Frenchman who was quite keen on birds, told me about the best sites in the area and recommended a guide, Modou, with whom I birded after my first day. Birds seen around Ranch de Bango included Vieillot’s Barbet, Grey Woodpecker, African Fish Eagle, Long-tailed Nightjar seen on several night walks, and a group of three River Prinia in the nearby lake, together with BlackCrake and African Jacana.


Sahelian acacia woodland in Les Trois marigots

At night, the hotel grounds were literally invaded by huge numbers of toads, of the same species I saw in Mauritania (see photo), and which I still haven’t been able to identify. They fed on the endless supply of insects attracted by the bar and restaurant lights, and in the morning some of them were so fat that they could hardly move. Very large Wall Geckos were also common in the hotel.

Alone or helped by Modou, I spent the next 4 days birding mainly around two areas:

-Ndiael Reserve, near the village of Ross Bethio, 45 km north of St Louis, is a large area of open acacia woodland that gradually thins down into scrub and semi desert. Among the trees Namaqua Dove was common, together with huge flocks of Red-billed Quelea Driving the many dirt tracks that crisscross the reserve one can reach the seasonal wetlands around the lake of Ndiael. The late rains had allowed some pockets of water to remain, but it was all doomed to disappear as the dry season got on. Blue-cheeked Bee-eater was common around the shrinking lake, together with Crested Lark and Chestnut-backed Sparrowlark. Flocks of Glossy Ibis, Sacred Ibis, and Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse flew overhead, and I saw Collared Pratincole in winter plumage and Kittlitz’s Plover near the water. Other birds in or around the remains of the wetlands included Black Stork, Montagu’s Harrier and a very pale form of Southern Grey Shrike. Near the village there were agricultural areas and rice fields forming an extensive marshland, which attracted Black-headed Lapwing, Winding Cisticola, Western Marsh Harrier and Red and Yellow-crowned Bishops.

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater

The acacia and shrub savannah known as Les Trois Marigots (the three lakes). These are extensive areas of acacia, scrub and grassland around seasonal lakes, not far from Bango. It is crossed by a maze of tracks, some with dangerously deep sand, and my car got stuck on one occasion, requiring a second car to pull me out. Although already drying out, the grass was still high and birds were difficult to see on the ground. Large herds of cattle graze throughout the reserves, and wild herbivores have all disappeared except for a few warthogs. White-throated Bee-eater was very numerous around here, and Abyssinian Roller reached spectacular numbers, with one on almost every tree. The remaining marshes held large numbers of Purple Gallinule.

Wetlands in Ndiael

Long drives and walks allowed me to find Singing Bushlark, Temminck’s Courser, Spotted Thick-knee, Cut-throat Finch… The last day at dusk, a male Savile’s Bustard crossed the path in front of my car. As I walked out trying to follow it, I found the only Black-headed Sparrowlark of the trip, a male. Palearctic migrants were abundant, especially in acacia areas: Great Spotted Cuckoo, Woodchat Shrike, Rufous-tailed Scrub Robin, Hoopoe… The one bird that I really was looking forward to seeing, and that eluded me in spite of whole mornings devoted to its search, was Black Scrub Robin, locally known as L’acrobate. It seems that they become quite elusive once the breeding season is over.

On the way back to Dakar, near the village of XXX, I saw a donkey carrion on which several species of vulture fed together: Lappet-faced, White-backed, Rüppell’s Griffon, and Hooded.


Spotted Thick-knee