We rose bright and early Wednesday morning in order to get
breakfast before our 7:30am departure for the Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary.
The hotel had it posted that their continental breakfast started at 7am, so we
figured we could get a quick breakfast in before having to head out.
Unfortunately, that sign was apparently just for show, because when I went for
breakfast, no one was even stirring and nothing had been set up. I was not a
happy camper. I mean, I don’t blame them for not setting breakfast up until
later because it’s very rare that people are up that early and want to eat, but
don’t have a giant sign in the lobby saying that breakfast starts at 7am if it
doesn’t! Just post a sign saying it starts at 8am so people know not to be able
to have breakfast. Humph.
Moving on. Our guide was there to pick us up at 7:25am and
we were off to the famous bird park, a 45 minute drive from Saint Louis. Djoudj
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (and so is the old colonial part of Saint
Louis, so that’s two checks off my list!!!!) and, encompassing 16,000 hectares
(40k acres), is one of the largest bird sanctuaries in the world. It is in the
northernmost part of Senegal, with part of the park actually located in
Mauritania. It’s the most famous for the flamingos and pelicans, but in the high
season 350 different bird species can be seen there. We were at the very end of
the season so there weren’t very many birds there at all. The park is the first
migration stopover after those that are migrating down from Europe cross the
Sahara, so the high season is of course in the fall and winter. Throughout the
migration season, the park will host about 1.5 million migratory birds! The guide
told us that the park would be closing in two weeks because even the small
amount of birds that were still there would be gone. We almost didn’t go
because I had been told there wouldn’t be much to see, but we decided to go
anyway, even if just for the nice boat ride through the wetlands.
The reason we had left so early was because the boat tour is
two hours long and by the time 11am comes around it’s pretty hot and miserable,
so we’d wanted to be done by then. We arrived at about 8:45, which was perfect
timing because the first large boat was going to leave at 9am. We were just
behind a small busload of French tourists, so when we pulled up our guide
rushed us to the boat so we’d get on before the group. We took the front bench
and our guide sat with the park rangers/guides at the very front of the boat
facing us. The guide we brought ended up being the guide for the whole boat. He
did a pretty good job of sighting birds and explaining everything to everyone,
and I translated for Angela. One of the rangers heard me translating and was
listening in because I think he tries to do some of the tours in English. The
hard part about translating in this particular setting is that I don’t know
what all the birds are called in English… I needed my cousin Morgan, who is a
bird expert and would have been able to give us all that information in
English! I did the best I could with the pelicans, egrets, cranes, and the
different non-aviary animals we saw on the shorelines as well.
The stars of the show are of course the pelicans, although
the park is also famous for its flamingos, but they had all already left. The
huge pelicans were the first thing we saw when we pushed away from the dock. I
didn’t know that pelicans fished together in groups and that they synchronized
their movements while doing so, so that was such an interesting thing to witness!
We learned that they live and fish in groups like that and that if you see a
pelican off fishing on its own, it’s most likely because it’s not feeling well
and doesn’t want to get the rest of its flock sick! Smart birds! I also loved
seeing their take-offs and landings on the water. They hop along the water with
their giant feet as they’re taking off/landing, which is fun to watch. In some
spots we could look up and see a whole group of them flying in circles high
above us. Apparently they do so to aide in digestion. 
We also saw other birds including some egrets, cranes, and
smaller golden eagles. One bird I found pretty cool was what they called the “snake
bird” because when it was in the water, all you could see was its long neck
that looked like a snake. Along the shoreline we saw a couple of large lizards
and crocodiles and a bunch of warthog families enjoying the water. The female
warthogs all had about 4 babies with them when we saw them, and the males were
huge! Besides the warthogs, lizards, and crocodiles, the only other thing we
saw on the banks were some long-horns. The weather was perfect, with clear
skies and not too much heat, so we enjoyed floating around trying to catch a
glimpse of different birds that were still in the area, but mostly watching the pelicans!
Our boat tour finished about 11 as we’d planned and we
headed straight back to Saint Louis. We had a 3pm shared taxi back to Dakar, so
when we arrived back into Saint Louis we had the driver drop us off at a
restaurant on the water so we could have a leisurely lunch. We originally
planned to have lunch back at the hotel, but after the breakfast fiasco, I wasn’t
inclined to give them any more of my money, so Angela and I shared some
different seafood pasta dishes in town before we headed back to the hotel, then
back to Dakar.
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| Mmmm.... Lunch! |
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