It seems like a long time since we'd been out ringing and we were very much looking forward to this trip. We had booked to join Guillem Chacon, Bird Ring Expeditions. Despite following his WhatsApp group and some social media posts for the last few months, this really didn't turn out to be what we were expecting.
The 8th was a day of travel, Heathrow to Barcelona, Barcelona to Dakkar, then transfer to the Blue Africa Hotel at Mbour. Jeremy, a Brit from Germany also joined our party as did David from Spain although he wasn't a ringer. The following day we made the 6 hour taxi trip to Djoudj and Camp Njagabaar where we were to spend the start of the trip until the 13th. The Dutch contingent of 4, Jan, Henri, Johannes and Arnold had already arrived.
This turned out to be the best place for ringing of the three. We wanted to place nets over the shallow pools, close to reeds with a few additional outside the camp in Acacia scrub. We had all taken a few extra nets and found out that Guillem had 38 of his own, however we were extremely limited as the only poles were 12 extendable fishing poles - 3 broke by the end of the first day. The Dutch are particularly practical when it comes to ringing equipment and we were in Georgia with Jan in 2016 when poles were made from strong reed stalks and branches and guys secured with a range of materials from local builders merchants, but the nature of the plants here completely ruled out pole construction. We had also brought a range of audio-lures and just as well since Guillem did not have any.
The first ringing happened on the 9th. Nets were dropped in the dark. I will say at this point that we usually provide a full list of numbers of each ringed species. This will not happen for this trip since a great many weavers were captured and we were told to release them as weavers don't get retrapped and there were not enough rings. Then other species were released as ring numbers were low. The rings were not Safring as we expected but aviculturist rings marked WWW.BIRDRING.NET. Over the weeks we found that these rings seem to corrode very fast and the chances of recoveries seemed slim at best. Full biometrics were taken on all ringed birds however, and this was a problem at times as there were very few bird bags, just net bags in fact. I had at least taken 10 of my own.
Over the five days some nice species were caught and ringed, but the numbers meant very little since so many birds were not brought to the ringing table, and even some that were, were taken from the bag and simply released.
Breakfast, the same at all three lodges. Coffee, tea, milk powder, bread and chocolate and peanut spread or jam (as long as it wasn't 'finish').
A lot of birds were caught here but rather less ringed as Black-headed weavers were released at the net and firefinches stopped getting rings when their size was getting low in stock.
On the 17th we transferred back to Parc National des Oiseaux de Djoudj. By this time we had insisted via the Dutch that metal poles be sourced giving us a few more chances to get nets up. Up until then some nets were erected using makeshift poles from various bits of ironware, either to support the broken fishing rods or as stand alone poles. This was the only place that the much promoted training of African ringers showed any evidence of happening. There were a couple of occasions when one of the visitors tried to work with a trainee (difficult as there was no common language) and photos appeared on social media straight away. Even here, species were brought back for trainees and were not processed. We had expected to stay on site at Station Biologique du Djoudj, however the accommodation was under refurbishment and had clearly not been operational for months, possibly years and a long way off being ready for visitors. We were to stay at Camp Bediel. That involved a 20 minute walk to the ringing site, and breakfast was not possible until well after 7am, sometimes until 7:45am and after Senegal won the Africa's football tournament there was nothing but mouldy bread on offer. We were also denied access to ring on the 17th due to the presence of a team from International Union for Conservation of Nature.
It was windy by 9 am the whole time we were there so, as I stayed and took food to the other ringers (Guillem had his taken by his girlfriend) I missed some nice early captures. Considering there had been previous visits to this site, there seemed to be little on offer in terms of knowledge regarding good places for nets from the leader of the expedition in windy conditions.
At 5pm, each day, we dropped nets in the acacia scrub to try for migrants and other resident birds, again
where to place nets was chosen by the visitors.
We had been told of a morning for ringing Pelicans, but this didn't happen despite promotional images all over the T-shirts that came as part of our package. Having seen the size of young (almost fully grown) any of us could have said that catching was extremely ill advised. Guillem was still talking about going either 21st/22nd, then on the morning of the 23rd after ringing and taking nets down, to hand catch birds on the river. We were completely disillusioned by the 22nd and handed him all the taken down kit as we weren't prepared to do the walks and breakfast debacle, then rush to take down for an experience that wasn't going to happen and all before taxis arriving at 11am. Drive to Mbour, 23rd, then a flight to Madrid then transfer to Heathrow over 24th/25th January.
Typical Senegalese town with horse and donkey cards and roadside vendors
We now have the final list, 569 birds ringed, 13 recaptures, 76 species. This is between 7 paying visiting ringers, a couple of trainees at the last site and two others that also did birds, that equates to some 70 birds each and I probably did fewer than that. It had seemed to me like I hadn't really ringed a great deal over about 13 days, some nice species, yes, but we're not overly into that side of ringing, more into contributing to a running study. But, using private rings didn't really tick that box either and Birdring.net website, which is on the rings, has no provision for reporting a ringed bird. Considering there have been visits to here before and it was branded as a ornithological station, for us it didn't achieve what we would expect. Insufficient poles, ringing more of what we caught and not loosing so much time waiting for food would have helped. I'm sure there are better sites, looking at other work currently ongoing in Senegal. It would have made a lot of difference had there been transport. There were some promising places a little further away but too far to spread ourselves without a vehicle. Simply if it hadn't been for the efforts of the Dutch and UK teams, it would have been a pretty poor outcome, especially with so few usable extendable fishing poles in the latter days of the trip.
We see from social media that the following opportunities are advertised. There are Station Biologique de Oiseaux or equivalent advertised as being in Benin, Cote Ivoire, Uganda, Kenya, Gambia, Peru, Mexico, Columbia, and Madagascar among others but a banner, does not in my opinion make an observatory and we went expecting to learn about new species and due to language or other reasons, that didn't happen. Training also needs to be intensive and prolonged, and whilst basic handling can be take to relatively quickly, it doesn't create necessarily someone that skilled from pitching up for a few days now and then, as opposed to a prolong period of several weeks working consistently with someone training, ringing a decent number of birds, even if it means quite a lot of boring Weavers. If you are considering any of these trips just be aware that Senegal was not a great experience for us, and it has to be asked, how can anyone manage so many different 'observatories'. Others have found them good, so it is very much a personal thing. Guillem was a charming guy, but the social media output was really high and we would have preferred more of a focus on the ringing aspect. It really depends what you want out of one of these trips. It didn't, in the end, tick the overly well organised box for us, bumping around three hostels. with one of them with very limited ringing area around it. We did get the feeling that we were not greatly contributing to the greater scientific good using private rings, whereas if we were using SAFRING or a European ringing schemes rings at least the data would be there for the long term. For example, like the Crested Lark photographed by one of the Dutch guys with a BTO ring, that potentially we can trace, even of the ringer is sadly no longer able to help.