This wasn't another birding trip, but I could not resist taking my camera equipment with me to such an exotic country as Gambia? My photography in Africa so far has been of the eastern and southern parts of Africa. So, in Gambia, which lies in the western part of Africa, I was hoping to encounter many new species, not to say that I was also hoping for the ease of close bird photography. This only applied to a small number of species near human settlements. Outside of these, birds were very skittish, probably due to the possibility of legally hunting selected species in Gambia. Being on such commercial trips, I always arranged for the assistance of a local guide, for 2-3 days from dawn to noon. Such a professional guide, during this time, is able to show you a lot of interesting birding spots and you can thus take photos. I have never written about this, but in Gambia I was very disappointed with the guide's approach, which I have not encountered anywhere else. This was down to the cost involved and the guide's own approach to his job. Let's start with the cost. We agreed that it would be €70, from sunrise to noon per day. Actually this was the guide's proposal, and I accepted it by email, a week before arriving in Gambia. I provided a species list of birds of interest to me with the clear emphasis that I was not an observer but a photographer. I asked for the probability of close contact with the selected bird species. This value of €70 in Gambia shocked me, as I know Gambia is one of the poorest and smallest countries in Africa. That's how much I paid in affluent Spain, for a competent guide with a car. In Gambia, with a GDP of US$480 per person, this is a gigantic rate in real terms. Here two comparisons. The first is that GDP per person in Poland is over US$17,000, which is statistically 36 times more than in Gambia. Finding a person at a rate of 70 EUR in Poland for 5 hours of work is not a problem. To make the accepted rate for a Gambian guide realistic to Polish conditions, I should multiply 70 EUR times 36. The resulting figure is 2520 EUR for five hours of work. This is a realistic rate for conditions in Poland. For that kind of money there would be thousands of people willing to work, even a temporary one. The second economic fact is the reality of the Gambian labour market. A worker with a job, which is hard to come by Gambia, earns about €60 per month! So my guide, for 5 hours of work received an average monthly salary. I don't mind, if someone is competent, committed then the agreed value is the due fee. Being briefly in Gambia I wanted to make the most of my time and so the decision was made to support a local guide. Meanwhile, my guide for our first meeting turned up without a bird atlas, and there was no bottled water in the untidy car, which is standard in warm countries where temperatures can reach 30 degrees before midday. After the first day, I sent two photos with my doubts about his correct identification of the species in which I was interested. He only sent back the opinion that they were very nice pictures. I did not ask about aesthetic impressions, but about the correctness of the designation. Here he turned out to be incompetent to top it all off. The reason is simple. Being a bird guide in Gambia is a lucrative occupation looking at the rates tourists pay. Most of them are older people who are observers and not photographers. Without insulting Them of course, they have fewer requirements than a photographer. They score bird species by making notes on pre-prepared species lists. The photographer has to take a picture, and so has to have proof of such an encounter with a bird species. So it is nice, friendly during such ornithological walks, where the guide points every now and then to a particular species he or she has observed, and all participants 'tick off' the species. Of course, they know most of the common species and mark them well, but for similar species there is a problem that only a professional can deal with. I'm not an expert at tagging birds myself, but I expect from a local guide for the high stakes of photographing support that I don't have errors in tagging. Before and during our bird search I talked about the importance of light, what is in the background and the distance to the bird. This all adds up to the quality of the photo later on. I think this was boring for my guide. He also didn’t not have all the recordings of the voices of the birds on my species list prepared. He simply didn’t prepare. The guide turned out to be so comfortable with this, on the second day, that he hired himself a driver to drive. In the morning it was less than an hour, before noon on the way back, due to traffic jams a little longer. Unimaginable in Europe! I think all my expectations of organised photography didn't live up to the hype, as the guide followed his beaten plan laid out for birdwatchers. We went to a place where there was a poorly organised place for birdwatching. Poorly, because there was no place where birds could perch in an interesting background. besides, why should I sit there if the birds on my list were not there? A Black Heron was also on that list. Just before noon, my guide led me to an escarpment from which, down below, I could see, a lake, a pond. The southern harsh light, the distance and the prospect of photographing a black heron! - unacceptable. It raised my blood pressure again!
In the text where I describe Thick-knee, the canoe trip cost me €55. This value included transport, kayak rental and a tasty breakfast, coffee, tea halfway through the expedition. A friend of mine, who was also in Gambia not so long ago, has a similar opinion to the one presented by me. I am writing this as a warning that if you don't have a particular species in mind, it is worth organising your own photography. This is how you can photograph dozens of bird species by visiting places you can find on the internet or just in the area. Taxis in Gambia are not expensive, although if you have the wristband of an expensive hotel on your arm, the rate can go up, as can the prices in roadside shops. If you want to photograph a particular species, it is worth arranging a rate from the result. This is where you will find out straight away if it will be realistically possible.
Galleries of the Green Woodhoopoe , Hooded Vulture, Black Kite, Yellow-billed Kite, Senegal Thick-knee, Piapiac, Double-spurred Francolin and many others, I made on my own without the support of a guide.
In the end, I think I left a little disappointed with what I saw in Gambia. I had previously read about what opportunities there were in terms of photographing birds, which realistically narrowed down to a few dozen species, and probably with a good guide to over a hundred. Gambia is a very densely populated country (182 people/km2, Poland 118). There are many people on the streets, beautifully colourfully dressed, trading everything they can. These streets have their own atmosphere, so typically African, and Gambians themselves a grateful subject for a photo-report of the trip. Meanwhile, they vehemently protest if you want to take photos showing such everyday Gambian life on the street. Taking a photo of a policeman or soldier in Gambia can be the start of trouble for a tourist. So, the photos didn't make it, and the photos in the gallery The others are random photos taken mostly from a car and don't reflect what I saw in Gambia. Certainly, Gambia is one of the interesting exotic countries for us, green and colourful, unfortunately, as I wrote, it is more difficult to take photos. Unfortunately, this beauty of Gambian nature and landscape is covered up year after year by tons of plastic rubbish, which is omnipresent. In the end, however, thanks as usual to my determination (carrying heavy equipment in 30-degree heat), I managed to improve many of the existing galleries on my site and there are also some new, interesting galleries and recordings of birds' voices. There are also a few galleries in the posted species list, which has been supplied with literally one photo to record the fact of a sighting of a representative of a species. For those who want to see such a real Africa with lions, elephants I assure you that this is not Gambia. These animals are no longer there. The attraction for tourists is supposed to be a safari organised in nearby Senegal. I will write about this pseudo-safari in the Senegal "Fathala Wildlife Reserve", which will appear soon.
Traditionally, in the information of each gallery was included a list of new galleries and those in which there have been changes after returning from Gambia. The list is also a collection of links to these galleries. If after the name of a particular species, in parentheses, there is a letter T- text is attached to the gallery, and V- the gallery has an audio recording-Voice. For a quick look at all the bird galleries created and altered after photographing in Gambia, just search in your browser for "Tags" in the tab on the right and find "Gambia-birds" there.
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