The birds of Dakar have captured my heart
DAKAR— My alarm clock here is a bulbul songbird. He rouses me each morning with his joyful call — get up sleepy head, get up.
I know he’s a bulbul because I tracked him with the kids, our already well-thumbed Guide des Oiseaux de l’Afrique de l’Ouest in hand. He’s all brown, save a golden throat — how perfect.
On my way to the store, two bright green, yellow-chested birds flew overhead and settled atop an apartment building. Wild African parrots.
That same trip, I took a new route home and discovered a chirping eucalyptus. More than 50 nests hung like Christmas ornaments from its branches. Little lemon-cultured weavers were playing a loud game of in-I-go, out-you-go.
How could you not fall in love with birds here? It would be like fasting at a wedding feast.
Even the plain brown vultures are marvellous. How they settle awkwardly on lampposts and tuck their heads behind them. They look like giant balancing coconuts, my son says.
This isn’t a country town. Dakar is a huge city, about the same size as Toronto. Its location though, makes it a bird destination. It’s both a peninsula in the Atlantic, and at a migration crossroads. Birds come down here all the way from northern Russia. They also come from across Africa.
There’s one wetland, the Technopole, inside the city where a Brit- ish ornithologist has counted 197 species of birds over the past two years. His name is Paul Robinson and he teaches at the city’s Cheikh Anta Diop university.
I boldly asked if I could join him on his next trip to the wetland, in exchange for a bottle of wine.
He agreed, although he doesn’t drink. Last Sunday, we took a cab together across the waking city and into the inner suburbs — Dakar’s version of Etobicoke.
The dense neighbourhoods suddenly opened up into green. We turned down a muddy road, shouldered on both sides by marshland.
After passing a group of boys in soccer jerseys, and some women selling freshwater fish from wide buckets, we were alone.
Except for a few fishermen and the birds. On our left we spotted a group of egrets — dollops of cream atop the green. Robinson pointed out five different kinds. Two kinds of herons gracefully stepped among them.
A black and white glitter in the sky shot down into the water before us. A pied kingfisher. Larks. Weavers. Plovers. Two redeyed coucals. I saw more birds there in five minutes than I can name in Toronto. Former president Abdoulaye Wade planned a technology park here. As we rolled up our pants to wade further up the road, it seemed obvious why it failed. We passed a sinking sign for the golf course that was built here. “This is the golf course road,” Robinson said gleefully. Other birders have reported hundreds of pelicans and clouds of terns settling here. It offers the only yearround lakes for 100 kilometres, Robinson explained, pointing out some purple swamp hens, that picked through the grass with licorice legs. And then, a cloud of lime green parakeets with long evergreen trails settled together on a palm tree across from us. All this, 15 minutes from downtown Dakar. Can you imagine? I’ve since learned the government announced a plan this summer to build a 20,000-seat wrestling stadium right here at the Technopole. Local opposition is mounting. Let’s hope it prevails. We waded back, to find the ignition on our cab was broken. So we pushed the car down the road until the engine roared. On our way back, Robinson told me about a seasonal lake just northeast of the city that is forming now. By November, it is home to hundreds of flamingoes. “Can we come with you?” I burst. He said yes. Catherine Porter is a Star columnist who has gone on leave for a year to live in Dakar, Senegal. She writes about her adventures each week in the Life section. She can be reached at catherine_porter@rogers.com. You can follow her daily snapshots on Twitter @porterthereport.