Quarter Three Report

The winter months saw a slow but steady increase in the number of birds seen for the Big Birding Year, adding 35 birds for the three months. I was also most pleased with having seen 5 lifers during winter , the most exciting being the Orange Ground-Thrush at Marutswa Forest near Bulwer and the delightful Yellow-throated Sandgrouse near Sun City. I am also tracking how may of the near-endemics and endemics I see during the Big Birding Year and to date we have seen 85% of the near-endemics and 71% of the endemics.

I have loved been out in the bracing cold and there was only one occasion while in the Berg with my family that we had to abandon being outdoors because of the gale force winds. We travelled 7000 km during the quarter, especially into Kwa-Zulu Natal, Free State, a visit to Dullstroom and to Magoebaskloof. Fred and the Jeep have been constant companions and we have enjoyed exploring places closer to home like Borakalalo and Vaalkop Dam Nature Reserves. I joined the bird club early one saturday morning to learn more about ringing as well, loved getting into the details of birds but I realise that ringing will not be my forte.

I spent special days with my sister and her family at her home in Hilton and we birded together in the Midlands. Doreen is now a convert, she is loving her birding both in her garden and further afield, she has bought her bird book and her list is growing, marvelous to see - go Dors! Even Inel joined in while she was out from Australia and I had little Jos scanning the skies for vultures on our walks at Sterkfontein Dam.

Another high-light for the quarter was birding with Jan and Martie. We spent a marvelous morning in Dlinza Forest at Eshowe guided by Jotham and the birding was a real treat.

I am pleased that I managed to keep the focus on birding throughout the winter and we birded for 28 days over the 3 months. This is an achievement given the pull of a duvet day, hot chocolate and a good book, maybe next year....

I now have three months left to chase both the remaining birds on my list as well as lifers. I started the Big Birding Year with a life list of 592 and I go into this last quarter with 581, only 11 birds off my starting point. As Phil just said its amazing where a passion can lead one, or is it an obsession, either way I had not really expected to be tracking these sorts of numbers and my expectations for the year have already been exceeded. Seeing the two Side-striped Jackals while birding in the forests of Magoebaskloof was a gem of a moment and there have been so many of these unexpected joys during the year.

The next step is to see how 'big' I can make the year. Brian has challenged me to 650 and I do love a challenge. My life list is at 661 and I am now harbouring intentions of getting it to 700. I am blogging at the flat in Cape Town and tomorrow is an important day to start the last quarter, a winter pelagic leaving from Hout Bay. I am nervous, dreading the swells but excited at the possibilities of new seabirds.

Weekend at Borakalalo

The Pearly was calling at dusk and Fred got a good fire going in the boma on saturday night, we had coffee with Italian nougat and I was planning the sunday birding. It all seems quite blissful but looking back I was frustrated most of the time. Each spot that we birded didn't reveal its special, the Quarry for Striped Pipit (yet another weekend with no success on this bird!), the picnic site for Grey Penduline-Tit and the longshot, a Finfoot as we walked at dawn along the Moretele River Walk. I thought I may have seen the Penduline-Tits but when I saw a Crombec in the birding party, I was then not sure about the tits, and of course the party flew off and I was left even more grumpy. It felt as though I am now trying too hard and some of the pleasure was slipping away. Even the antics of the Puffback seemed to be trying to lighten my mood....

It also did not help our mood when the Vervet Monkeys stole our breakfast provisions...

Anyway I did eventually pull myself together, Fred found a store and stocked up, we made a good lunch and then ambled along the Klipvoor Dam waters edge which with a stretch of the imagination feels like Botswana. I spent time enjoying the hundreds of waterbirds and working on the identification of the waders on the muddy banks.

The list by the time we left was over 80 birds and I am now planning a pelagic trip from Hout Bay for this weekend. I am not looking forward to the sea but I am really looking forward to swelling my list.

My friend Sharon sent me this quote which is a special way to herald spring:

Everything is blooming most recklessly;
if it were voices instead of colours, there would be an
unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Dipping on Striped Pipits

I had no success with finding Striped Pipits on the rocky slopes of the Walter Sizulu Botanical Gardens early saturday morning and it certainly was not for want of trying either. We eventually settled into our legs as my friend Natalie says, packed water and KitKat, and had a glorious walk along the perimeter. We spotted a pair of Pipits on the rocky ridge and I willed them to be striped with yellow-edged wings - but no luck.
The Verreaux's Eagles were soaring above us and are always an impressive sight over the gardens. We watched the juvenile on the nest from the videocam in the office and it seems about to fledge, it is special considering how built up the area is around these birds.
Hamburgers and rugby were the next distraction before we took a drive to Northern Farm. We had never been there and have heard about the Farm mostly from cyclists and wanted to get a sense of the space. Enjoyed the late afternoon light on the dams, watched a Greater Kestrel and added Capped Wheatear to the Gauteng Challenge before heading home.

Yellow-throated Sandgrouse

It was surprising cold in the field near Sun City as we were quietly waiting with Stuart Groom for the first of the Yellow-throated Sandgrouse to make their fly-over. The stakeout was along a stream in the open savanna that is fed from the Sun City overflow very close to the main access road to the complex. The area has sandy patches as well as water pools with low-angle approaches that attract the sandgrouse as an early morning drinking and sand bathing spot.

I had connected with Stuart via his blog and he kindly agreed to meet us, share he knowledge and take us to this particular stakeout. We were treated to wonderful views of the birds flying in, some 30 to 40 birds over the couple of hours we spent at the stakeout, their characteristic calls and their flying actions making them so distinctive. We were treated to good close-ups of both the males and females of this large sandgrouse and I was completely taken in by them, the beautiful colouration and their behaviour made them one of my special lifers for the Big Birding Year.

The plan for the rest of the day was to explore the lesser known nature reserves to the North-West of Gauteng - Vaalkop Dam and Borakalalo. I was well organised with coffee, a picnic and a reasonably willing Fred to amble around back roads and explore and I also had some target birds to tackle for the year.

Vaalkop was quiet, felt unspoilt and the muddy edges of the dam was a treat for water birds - spoonbills, storks, cormorants, heron, ducks, crakes, gulls, fish-eagles, bee-eaters, kingfishers made for a good place to sit, to watch and just to be without listing. Walking along the edge for Black Heron came to an abrupt halt when I disturbed a hippo! We then birded from the various approaches roads from the car and I did find 3 Black Herons canopy feeding, an interesting hunting method, they use their wings like an umbrella and the shade it creates, to attract fish. The photo below shows the canopy feeding, bit far away but I was cautious about the hippos and crocodiles....

We got into Borakalalo late afternoon and did not have much time to explore, so drove straight to the picnic spot in the broad-leaved woodland along the game drive. The plan was to find a birding party and patiently wait for Bennett's Woodpecker which is known to be around this spot. As we turned into the picnic area, I saw a flash of olive green and Fred saw a woodpecker. We were out the car, creeping up to the bird, saw the spots and the brown facial markings of the female and we had our Bennett's! All in a few seconds.

I was hoping our luck would hold for an African Finfoot along the Moretele Walking Trail. We kept a vigil until dark at their known breeding sopts but it was not to be, so looks like I need to book into the tented camp and try again soon. Sixteen hours later we arrived home, the joy of birding.

Bird in the Hand

The only bird I held at the ringing session at Melville Koppies on Saturday morning was the Cape Robin-Chat, the bird of the year here in South Africa. It felt fragile in my clumsy hand and I could feel its racing heartbeat.

I was pleased to read this piece in our Wits Bird Club email:
Gail Schaum reports that at the ringing morning at Melville Koppies on Saturday 12th September an “old” Cape Robin was ringed and Safring confirmed that it was ringed 9 years ago at Melville Koppies by Jumbo Williams, who was a Wits Bird Club ringer at the time. That’s one of the things that make ringing so exciting.
This was the little bird I held for a moment!

Ringing will not be something that grabs hold of me, I felt all thumbs trying to hold the terrified bird, glasses perched on my nose, handling the weighing and measuring equipment, it all did not quite come together. I enjoyed meeting Malcolm Wilson though, a well-known ornithologist and ringer, who showed us all the details on feathers relating to moulting, age as well as diet. His stories about forays into Africa are intriguing, maybe its time to start thinking about venturing north.
The Wits Bird Club outing to Modderfontein this morning got me walking and enjoying the milder weather, first time my arms have been exposed for quite some months. We all had good sightings of some raptors in the alien trees- Long-crested Eagle, Black Sparrowhawk, Gabar Goshawk and after our coffee break I saw the resident Spotted Eagle-Owl. Very pleasant outing and I few more birds for my Gauteng list. Also saw my first swallows of the season, White-throated Swallows over Dam 4.

Jan and I spent our Women's Day public holiday riding the Rust de Winter roads to the far North-East of Pretoria. I am still mopping up some missing birds and was looking for the Yellow-throated Petronia. The birds obligingly showed up exactly where suggested in 'Birding Gauteng'. We had a good walk along the Dam edge, even started to complain about getting hot and a welcome picnic of camembert sandwiches and coffee. Jan added loads of birds to her list and it was a good day out.

From Tzaneen to Magoebaskloof

The morning started with Side-striped Jackals in a glade of the Woodbush Forest. It was just past 6am, we had met up with David Letsoala at the Magoebaskloof Hotel and were making our way to start birding in the indigenous Afromontane forest.

Unlike the smaller Black-backed Jackal which is found on the open grasslands, the Side-striped Jackal is nocturnal and lives in woodland and scrub on the edges of the forest. It is noticably larger too, white tip to its long bushy tail, had a buff-grey colour and the sides are marked with a white stripe with black lower margins. We quietly sat and watched them, all concerns for birding pushed into the background, our first encounter with this carnivore as it is timid and rarely seen.


We spent the night before in Tzaneen with Claire and Don, delightful young people and so generous with their time and space. We passed the evening braaing and marvelling at Wood Owls - Claire has hand raised a Wood Owl which she found abandoned. What I loved was watching the wild bird that visits each night, it sits in the tree as well as coming down onto the roof of the cage. We could not decide what its intentions are, amazing to be so intimately involved with a wild creature.

Must also be one of my favourite owl calls, deep resonating 'hoo-hoo', or something similar. David mentioned that the female has a higher pitch than the male, so I think both birds are males and we were experiencing territorial behaviour.

An African Goshawk, a find in the forest along our drive.

The forest delivered quite a few of my target birds, Blue-mantled Crested-Flycatcher, Grey Cuckooshrike, Yellow-streaked Greenbul, a female Black-fronted Bush-shrike.

As always forest birding is a challenge, straining my neck and eyes trying to get onto birds as they move through the canopy, in some cases over 50 meters in height.

Even more frustrating was working the forest edges for the elusive Barratt's Warbler, thanks to David I did eventually get a fleeting glimpse and we were treated to its call as well. First lifer for August under the belt.

The Bat Hawk was deja-vue, same guide, even more bizarre it is the same bird that we saw in November 2004, the weekend of Claire and Don's wedding, in the same huge Saligna Gum - apparently the tallest tree in South Africa! David was telling us that this bird was ringed in the mid-80's and birders have been watching it for all this time. Fitting to see this bird at one of the only reliable stakeouts in the country, I also had excellent sighting of Lesser Honeyguides in the gums and David pointed out their head bobbing behaviour. Fred has two photos, one showing the white-eye lids of the Bat Hawk and the second photo with its eyes open.The field guides illustrate the birds as being all dark and only the juvenile with white below the breast, well here is one seriously mature bird with white under belly. The white feet are just peeping out from the feathers.

To round off an awesome morning David took us to his favourite spot for Short-clawed Larks, up and over the mountains into the much drier grasslands on the way to Polokwane. We arrived at the stakeout and within a few minutes had my next lifer for August. I was very pleased particularly after the more frustrating Warbler experience earlier in the morning. It's a striking Lark with bold markings.