Diawling floodplain — pelicans, flamingos and Palearctic ducks
Great white pelican, lesser & greater flamingo, garganey, pintail, shoveler, black stork, spoonbills, Caspian tern, African & Eurasian waders. Parc National du Diawling, lower Senegal delta (Mauritanian bank), Mauritania.
Best time: 15 Nov – 15 Feb (November to February). Where: Diawling park HQ & Bell basin, Keur Macène, Chott Boul (Mauritania). Time of day: From first light to about 09:00 for duck and pelican movement.
- Partly on your own
- Entry fee
- Binoculars essential
- Sound 4/5
Open it in the interactive calendarSunrise and sunset listening times for the day you pick, and the map.
When is the best time?
Peak: 15 Nov – 15 Feb. Mid November to mid February, while the managed flood still covers the Bell and Diawling basins
Active from 15 Oct to 31 Mar (October to March) in a typical year.
Time of day
From first light to about 09:00 for duck and pelican movement; the last hour before dark for the egret and cormorant roosts
- Dawn flight: first light → 150 min after sunrise
- Evening roost: 1 h before sunset → last light
What will you hear?
Pelican flotillas grunting, garganey and pintail flocks whirring off the flooded basins, flamingo chorus, and the low background of the Diama dam and the Senegal river.
Binoculars?
Binoculars essential. Pelicans and duck flocks on the flooded basins at 100–500 m from the causeway and pirogue; binoculars needed.
Where to go
- Diawling park HQ & Bell basin — Entrance on the Rosso–Diama road; pirogue trips through the flooded basins with park guides. Sister site of Djoudj on the Senegalese bank. Map
- Keur Macène — Village on the northern edge of the park; access to the Aftout es Saheli depression. Map
- Chott Boul — Coastal lagoon north of the park: flamingos and waders, very few people. Map
How to go on your own, and what it costs
Taxi-brousse Nouakchott–Rosso, then the Diama road to the park HQ; entry fee and a park guide are required inside the basins (park rule), pirogues are the park's own. The road across the Diama dam and the causeway through the park is public and gives free roadside viewing of the flooded basins.
Cost: Park entry and guide/pirogue fees — check current prices at the HQ.
Free or no-guide alternative: The public Rosso–Diama–N'Diago road runs along the flooded basins: park on the causeway at dawn for the duck and pelican flight without entering the park.
Who runs access
- Parc National du Diawling – park guides and pirogues (HQ) (park authority) — Park-run; the only boats inside the basins.
Field-recording notes
The delta is dead flat and the harmattan blows dust across it from December — dawn is calm, afternoons are not. Villages mean cattle, dogs and outboard pirogues; inside the basins it is quiet apart from the occasional generator at the guard posts. Mosquitoes are serious in November. Entry fee and a park guide are required; night access is by arrangement with the park (camping at the HQ). The Senegalese border (Diama dam) is a few kilometres away — carry your passport. Check current travel advice for the region.
Sources
Similar spectacles
Somone lagoon — pelicans, flamingos and the sandbank roost on the Petite CôtePelican wings and bill-clapping as the flock lands, tern and gull roost clamour, flamingo honks, spoonbills and herons in the mangrove, osprey whistles — small-scale next to the Saloum but the closest proper lagoon roost to the Saly resorts, and quiet at dawn before the jet-skis.
Flamingo colonies & courtshipGoose-like gabbling of big flocks, and the synchronised 'marching' displays with a constant honking.
Tagus estuary in winter: flamingos, avocets and 100,000 waterbirdsFlamingo flocks honking as they move between the estuary and the Lezíria rice fields, avocet and godwit roosts chattering on the salinas at high tide, teal whistling on the lagoons and the great winter silence of the open marsh broken by hunters' shots outside the reserve.
Marchica lagoon, the Moulouya mouth and the Mohammed V reservoir — the Mediterranean east in winterFlamingo honking across a lagoon the size of a city, wigeon whistling, shelduck, the bugling of common cranes at the Mohammed V shore at dusk, and in spring a booming bittern and avocet colony clamour at the Moulouya mouth. Nador's traffic and the fishermen's outboards are the backdrop; the Moulouya is quieter.
Saharan lagoons — Khnifiss and Dakhla Bay in winterFlamingo honking in the hundreds across a lagoon with no other sound at all, wader flocks lifting, the rattle of royal and Caspian terns, and on Dakhla Bay the blow of a humpback dolphin close to shore.
Sidi Moussa–Oualidia lagoons — 10,000 waders, flamingos and the salt-pan roostsAvocet and stilt yelping over the salt pans, godwit and dunlin flocks whirring up at each marsh harrier, flamingo honking from the lagoon, slender-billed gulls — against surf on the dune bar and the oyster farms' outboards.
More: all spectacles in Mauritania · flamingos · pelicans · winter geese, swans and ducks · Mauritania in January · Mauritania in February · Mauritania in November · Mauritania in December