This past week saw the Tankatara area near Port Elizabeth become the birding hotspot for the week, with an eruption of rarities reporting in the span of a few days. The action all started when a Little Ringed Plover was picked up on the salt pans on Saturday the 26th of August. The bird was…
On Friday a whatsapp message came through in a birding group, of a Great Egret spotted by Dave Winter, just passed Rooi Els. The message arrived just after 17:00, and once I had seen it, the time was already 17:30. I had to decide whether I’d make it to the location before sunset. I already…
With a rare weekend of beautiful winter weather on the cards, I made sure to get out in the field as much as possible this weekend. Saturday I spent the day at Lourensford Farm building up a list of species for their conservation department, while on Sunday I went through to Strandfontein Sewage Works with…
While most birders work hard towards their life lists, whether it be a global life list or for their sub-region; some focus just as much on their provincial lists. Personally, I’ve always seen my Western Cape list as my most important, simply because that is the one I was able to focus on. Not having…
We’d been trying to make plans to stay with our friends Keir and Alouise in Napier for over a month now, however with winter conditions having been prevalent on most of the weekends we had tried planning, we’d just not been able to make it happen. Finally we were given an opportunity, as forecasts showed…
After an early morning visit to Ceres, I got home and logged onto my computer, downloading my snow images and getting ready to work on them. Just a few minutes into my work however, a whatsapp message came through of a Eurasian Blackcap photographed in a Durbanville garden just a few minutes earlier. Having just…
The weather forecasts for the past week had been showing a strong cold front pushing through the Western Cape on Saturday evening into Sunday morning. Of particular interest with this front was the forecasted freezing levels, which suggested that we may be in for a good snow event across parts of the country. With the…
Some rare bird news filtered in during the week of a juvenile Violet-Backed Starling photographed in at a garden feeder in Groot Brak River, along with the presence of a Great Spotted Cuckoo and White-Browed Scrub Robin at Reflections Eco-Reserve at Rondevlei (Wilderness). The premise of the ‘Scrubber’ and the provincial mega Violet-Backed Starling had…
While our trip had seen us awake at completely unreasonable hours, it was decided that we wouldn’t be rushing out on Saturday, and instead we’d take it easy. We still wanted to hit the road in the morning though, as we’d be starting our venture back to Cape Town. While everyone else enjoyed their breakfast,…
After our success twitch of the Malagasy Pond Heron the day before, we were feeling confident in our next target; that of the Striped Crake at Thiyeni hide in Hluhluwe Game Reserve. Hidden somewhere between our thoughts of optimism, we all knew that given the small area which the hide overlooks, in combination with the…
“Who’s on board the twitch bus?”, a query asked a few times this past week in our local whatsapp birding group. A newcomer to the group, I had assumed any mention of a twitch bus was purely in jest; there surely couldn’t be a twitch bus. That was until Garth Shaw sent me a message:…
In South Africa we encounter countless amounts of Little Egrets out in the field. They are a common bird which are typically found in shallow areas of water, both salt and fresh water. When compared to our other Egrets; it’s a fairly straight forward identification process. With that said, when one throws into the mix…
Being able to identify the bird you’re looking at is probably the most core aspect of birding, it is also one that doesn’t come without effort. Like with most things in life, what you put in is what you get out and if you continue trying to learn, you’re going to improve. If you become…
With my provincial list now requiring me to travel a fair amount in order to see new birds, and petrol being at near all time highs, this past weekend saw Monique and myself set some fairly easy target birds for her list. Having just started listing in February of this year, she still has a…
Earlier this past week we twitched the African Crake at Strandfontein, only to get home and receive another rare bird alert minutes later saying that a Knob-Billed Duck had been spotted just a couple hundred meters away from the Crake. The report came in the late afternoon and we wouldn’t be able to make it…
This is no doubt the most depressing piece I have ever written, and although my fingers press against the keys in an array of existential dread and carnivorous guilt, I feel as though the expression of thought through word is only fitting. Not as an undeserved relief to myself, but as tribute to what was…
Late yesterday afternoon I received an email from the South African Rare Bird alerts, saying that an African Crake had been seen and photographed at Strandfontein on the S3 pan in the afternoon. Unfortunately it was too late for us to leave from Somerset West to try and twitch the bird, so I decided to…
After a nearly three year absence from the Somerset West bird club outings, I decided to join up with the club again as they visited Vergenoegd Farm and Spier Wine Farm during the monthly outing. After fighting with the warmth of the duvets, we managed to make it to the meeting area in time, with…
There’s been a bit of a lull with regards to rare birds over the past two weeks, so I haven’t been engaged in any twitching. Instead, I’ve been focusing more on helping Monique gather new species for her life list. Having only started a few months ago, she has quite a few birds to see…
Prior to my recent Flock at Sea cruise, I knew little about the Tristan Albatross. Sure, I had seen it in my guide books and the fact that it was listed as a critically endangered species. But only after the events on board the MSC Sinfonia did I begin to read about the bird and…