BUND ROAD - CAPE POINT
ROAD MORNING AND AFTERNOON
We decided to visit the coast for
a second time in order to look for waders, gulls, terns and sea-birds that we
had not seen yet. We set off at our usual time of 7:30am and drove straight to
the well known ‘Bund Road’. This road is a back route into the docks at Banjul
and has a large tidal mangrove swamp on the land side and a good expanse of
tidal mud-flats on the other. However, we arrived at high tide, so there were
not too many birds wading about on mud! We did find lots of gulls and terns and
indeed we found a new gull for the list: Slender-billed Gull, they roosted on
the water with hundreds of Grey-headed Gulls, Royal, Lesser-crested and
Sandwich Terns. A few Pink-backed Pelicans also sat on the water and a couple
of Great Cormorants sat on posts.
We drove the cross-river ferry
terminal where we stood the beach and scoped the river at its widest point.
Plenty of gulls and terns were feeding offshore but we were more interested in
Skuas and within minutes we found two
Pomerine Skuas that were fairly close to the shore.
Next we drove to the mangrove
swamp on the Cape Point Road. I have never seen so many Caspian Terns in one
place, there must have been over 1,000 birds. The usual collection of waders
were also found but nothing new for our records. We walked over to the beach
side of the road and searched some reeds for warblers, we came up with Subapline Warbler and a Zittting Cisticola. By the time we had
finished the walk it was getting close to lunch time so we set for the hotel
and took a long lunch break.
For the afternoon we returned to
the Bund Road and this time the tide was perfect with a good number of waders
feeding on the exposed mud-flats. We saw our first Black-tailed Godwits and
plenty of Bar-tailed Godwits, Sanderling, Ringed Plover, Grey Plover, Curlew
Sandpipers and Ruddy Turnstones. The larger waders were either Whimbrel or
Curlew, whilst the majority of terns were Royal or Lesser-crested.
For our last stint of watching we
drove across to the Cape peninsular to search for White-fronted Plover without success, but we did find another new
wader for the trip list in the form of Oystercatcher,
there were 3 of them feeding out on the mud. Not much else was found and the
light was now dimming so we set off back to the hotel to get Before we reached
the hotel we made a quick stop at a disused sand quarry, it was quite deep and
held plenty of water and lots of reeds. The sides of the quarry were covered in
rubbish and yet there was still bird lifer in and the pools. We found Purple
Swamphen, Common Moorhen and a Little Grebe, we stayed for about 30minutes
before heading off to the hotel.
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