Category Archives: Birds & Birding

Xmas Activity

First a gang of bandits invade, foraging . .

– banded mongoose gang investigates what’s for lunch –

. . then a prinia flies in, busy, busy. Looking for nesting material

– tawny-flanked prinia chooses nesting material –

A busy xmas and boxing day in Elston Place, Westville, KZN.

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Morning Sun from the West!?

I suddenly realised yesterday that the Yellow-bellied Greenbul was in bright light, as was the Purple-crested Turaco that was the next lady for a shave. It was 8am and the trouble with my birdbath is that it’s in deep shade and the morning light from behind makes photography difficult.

Took me a while to work it out. So this morning I recorded what happened. Watch how the sun is behind the trees, then suddenly appears between the pickup and left of the trees! Then the sunlight moves from left to right till the birdbath is bathed in its glory.

What the heck? I walked out onto the lawn and looked back:

– the sun from the east beating down on my chair – the reflected sun shining back on my birdbath –

The building behind us on the crest of the hill reflects the winter morning sun down onto my birdbath! Whattapleasure! It’ll only last a little while as the sun moves towards winter solstice. I’ll try’n get a good picture while it lasts. This morning was windy and nothing came to the bath while I watched. Not a sausage!

Whattahoot! Just last week I had used a shaving mirror to reflect the sun onto a butterfly in shade. Here it was being done for me!

– Forest Queen butterfly in shade – in sun by using a shaving mirror –

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One Day

I know I should work to earn money so I can one day sit on my arse and listen to the birds and photograph butterflies. And see two gory kills within minutes, with two animals dying before my very eyes to satisfy the hungry needs of their predators.

So this morning:

– Forest Queen – ‘rare south of the Tugela’ –

Flies don’t even have to be buttered to be photographed:

– some diptera or other – big fly –

A drongo zapped an insect in mid-flight and a sunbird nabbed probably a spider off the mistletoe, killing them mercilessly for food in the great cycle of nature. Someone has to be sitting on his arse to witness these things.

butterfly Forest Queen
– remote camera setup – pics triggered from my cellphone –

This time I was determined to concentrate. I gazed at my cellphone fiercely for hours. Once I had to change the camera’s battery. This Forest Queen thought he could outwit outplay outlast me!? Huh! I was determined to catch him opening his wings to make sure he was a male. I was occasionally distracted. Had to make coffee, had to reply to some slights on whatsapp, had to take these photos to show the remote setup and my impressive camera (you’ve heard about okes with small willies having to compensate with big cameras, right? Well.). And once I was also – fatally – distracted by Tommy who NEEDED me to transfer cash to his eWallet.

Done. Then back to the app:

– BLIKSEM!! –

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California Honeymoon

First job in California is to get into the nearest cheap motel and start the search for a Ford Econoline Camper! We’re going to drive our own home for a week! Of course, I’ll do the sums. I’m not irresponsible. It’ll have to be reasonable . . .

Those days you still used telephone directories, yellow pages and a phone plugged into the wall!

– sure, it costs a bit more than motels, but . . . –
– oh it was well worth it, I said – cheeky vrou took an upskirt pic of me! –

Off to Yosemite! Heard about it all my life and now we were going there!

– the rude wives of California –
– our favourite Yosemite pics of each other –

Favourite birds probly the Acorn Woodpecker, the California Quail and the Roadrunner.

– pics from wikipedia –

From Yosemite we headed back to the coast in an arc to drive the Big Sur coastline

We were in California cos Aitch said ‘Hey! We can’t only be in the sticks! I’ve never seen an American city with its shops and bright lights. You have.’ OK, m’dear I said, thinking Yosemite, Redwoods, Big Sur coastline. Oh, and San Francisco – we’ll ‘do’ San Francisco, OK?

So we did, we hired a small car after handing back the camper – and paying in for a bumper bashing while reversing in Yosemite – and roamed the streets, going down the famous twisty Lombard Street and catching a few trams. And, unfortunately, shopping. I dunno what Aitch bought, but I got caught for such a sucker when I bought a telescope. One of these salesmen: ‘Ah! South Africa! Aangename kennis! Hoe gaan dit?’ you know the kak. So I overpaid for this telescope which was OK, but not what I had wanted. ‘Sucker!’ chortled Aitch, showing zero sympathy. Was this what marriage was going to be like? Was she not going to be like my Ma, who would have sympathised with her poor boy?

– Aitch collected postcards of SF –

I cheated a bit, using the car to also go across the big bridge and into the redwood trees at Muir Woods, just 20km north of San Francisco. This using her ‘city time’ for my ‘backwoods time’ did not go unnoticed, nor unmentioned. But she loved the redwoods as much as she’d loved the sequoias!

– internet pics –

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Big old photo album has been thrown out. But first I recorded all the photos here:

We loved California. Now, we were off to Wyoming – We’ve been to Yosemite, now I’d love to go to Yellowstone! You too, right Aitch?

Lawn Butterfly

I always have little ‘blues’ on my lawn; small butterflies, some tiny that flit about too small, too fast and too pale for my camera to get a decent shot. They usually look little pale grey beauties.

But yesterday one was different, bigger; so I out with the camera and managed to get two fuzzy pics:

I thought ‘Hairtail;’ iNaturalist got back in seconds and said ‘Hairstreak;’ Now I’m thinking maybe one of the Sapphires? The fascinating thing about identifying creatures is . . names change! Knowledge is constantly being updated. Often the only real way to know what you’re looking at is to ask an expert, as even the most recent books are out of date to different extents. They keep up to the minute and usually instantly have a pretty good idea of what they’re looking at, taking image, location, time of year, etc into account.

I’ll update when I find out what this beauty is. And I’ll keep an eye out for a better picture.

Ah! Suncana says its Iolaus silas, the Southern Sapphire! Sun is our in-house entomologist on our Palmiet Rangers whatsapp group, and has a Palmiet project on iNaturalist, which I have now joined. She sent a better pic – Steve Woodhall’s from biodiversityexplorer.info

– Southern Sapphire Iolaus silas – Steve Woodhall on biodiversityexplorer.info –
– tiny yellow meadow flower – while I was down there –

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Bonus! Pictures from a Palmiet neighbour who’s a great photographer. Most (all?) taken right here in our valley:

– Roger Hogg photos –
– red-fronted tinker – Roger Hogg –

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Zululand Zilwaans!

izilwane – (wild) animal/s. Phinda game reserve started as Phinda Izilwane – ‘the return of the wild animals.’ We’ve been missing our monthly jaunts up to Zululand in this COVID lockdown time. Jessie asked yesterday ‘Dad, when can we go to Mfolosi again?’

One consolation: I have been added to the whatsapp groups that share sightings in Mkhuze and in Hluhluwe-Mfolosi reserves. Now the reserves are closed they’re sharing past pictures. Beautiful.

– whatsapp groups of Zululand reserves – pics over the years –

And I sent in some of mine taken over the years

– some pics I have taken in Hluhuwe, Mfolosi and Mkhuze reserves over time –

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Beautiful Spider

I was trying to attract birds, but down came a spider. I think he’s a bark spider, but he could be a different kind of orb web spider. Bark spiders also spin big orb webs and my birdfeeder perch makes a great platform for an aspiring award-winning web spinner.

At first I thought it was an empty carapace from something that had hatched and flown, like a dragonfly. But then he moved . .

https://videopress.com/v/9btki3fi?preloadContent=metadata
– spot him at the base of the branch –
– stunning camouflage –

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Remote Cam Adventures

– hadeda ibis –

I got the remote setup working again: Canon on a tripod, targeted on the tap birdbath in the shrubbery, and viewfinder on my cellphone. Then I waited. The same problem I noted before is still evident: my attention span. Eventually, a rare bird strolled by and seemed quite interested.

Hours later the Underbrush Eagle, who today has been playing a Klaas’ Cuckoo, came for a shower.

– bracing! – a red-capped robin-chat – famous mimic – has a bath –
– red-capped robin-chat – notorious eagle and cuckoo mimic –

Later an Olive Sunbird arrived and then two White-Eyes – both blending too well with the background and too quick for my camera – just blurs and water droplets! That’s another challenge: the delay between my finger firing the button on my phone and the camera firing – I’d guess near a quarter second. So the bird has often flucked or flitted – or at least changed his pose!

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I made a .gif of the pics and – 😉 – froze the lil bird in mid-moon for three frames!

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Palmiet Lockdown Portfolio

Lockdown has given us the opportunity to share pictures of birds and mammals and insects and other creatures seen. And plants, which I’ll show in another post. Thanks to the lovely gang of Palmiet Rangers for sharing these! I’m afraid I don’t know all their full names, but the top pic was by Roy Smith, and Roger Hogg took all these bird pics; the butterfly, scorpion and mamba are Suncana Bradley’s. The bushbuck pics may be by Lt-Col Geoffrey Caruth (shown bottom-left in the collage below).

– palmiet lockdown pics –

This one showcases the reason we’re here! Bird pics and green hawk moth Roger; Citrus Swallowtail butterfly Elize Taylor; White-barred Emperor at bottom, vervet and stick insect mine; Big moth on white is Cay Hickson’s; I don’t know who shot the bushbuck nkonka, but believe it was in their garden in David Maclean road – let me know pls!

– Palmiet lockdown pics –
– the Caruth’s window on the valley –

. . and lastly, when one of these grows up they want to be the other one:

– Sun Bradley’s pics –

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Lockdown Loaded – 2

– ConJunct- tivitis Dove – ConJunct- tivitis Dove –
– carpenter bee –
– which butterfly blue? –
– big thunderhead to the north of us –
– why we’re here –

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Then it rained and I remembered a bit late about my duvet! I had put it out to dry in the sun! So I brought it inside – wet – and stayed inside. Mistake! I shouldn’t have! ALL the neighbours showed me what I missed – a rainbow in a sunset!

– Palmiet neighbours – tonight’s sunset pics –
Palmiet neighbours pics

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Lockdown Loaded

Sundry garden fauna and flora! Not having pets helps – especially with the mongoose, I’m sure.

– Top L African Monarch?; Bottom R Blue Pansy – Brown Pansy –

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Neighbours bordering the Palmiet Nature reserve (we have a road between us and the reserve) have also seen seeing some amazing sightings during lockdown:

– “shifrafred” – banded mongoose family – plus bemused dassie onlooker –
– someone’s bushbuck – nkonka –
– Roger Hogg’s White-eared Barbet nestling –
– Lellos mamba –

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The Red-Faced Barbet

Aitch used to look at these Two-Puddly birds and say ‘Why Black-collared Barbet? they should be called Red-faced Barbet!’

There’s probably already a red-faced, I said; and I don’t know why I didn’t go looking then. I suppose life happened. Anyway, she prolly took my word for it.

Listen: Here’s why we called ours ‘Two-Puddly’ (old man Geoff Leslie used to call them Scottburgh – that’s where he would hear them most, at the Fyvie’s coastal cottage).

And there is a Red-Faced Barbet. It’s found up on the western shore of Lake Victoria. It’s duet is a bit less musical, more frog-like, if they don’t mind me saying so:

– pic by Michelle Summers – ebird.org – Cornell Macaulay library –

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Black-collared Barbet (Lybius torquatus) – Red-faced Barbet (Lybius rubrifacies) – cousins

Thanks – Margaret Elworthy Coombes – for the Black-collared Barbet pic on wikipedia

Aargh!! I Haydid !

I hate it! ***

For years before 1989 I wanted to see a Bufftail – a Buff-spotted Flufftail. I heard plenty, but saw none. First at Hella Hella; Then in 1989 we moved into our first home in Westville and there was one in our yard! We heard him all the time!

But still I didn’t see him. It grew into an obsession. Seeing this little day-old-chick-sized bird was a real desire. I stalked around the garden, lying still for ages as he stopped calling whenever he detected my presence. I lay at the nearest window with a searchlight, bufftail calling within metres. All in vain; the bird’s caution and patience far exceeding mine.

– Sarothrura elegans – thanks, planetbirds.blogspot.com –

I’ve written about my quest before. We stayed in River Drive for fifteen years and have been in Elston Place for thirteen. Here we also hear a flufftail but not as often nor as closeby.

And now a friend moves in to a new home and – less than two years after moving in – films this from his balcony:

Aargh! Rob Davey!

Here’s the Bufftail hoot again – from xeno-canto.org – sharing bird sounds from around the world:

. . and here’s one to show how small they are – thanks, birdlifetrogons.blogspot.com

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*** I haydid – is a Friderichs-ism. Bobby – from ‘Slunnin – used to say ‘I haydid!’ in mock displeasure when things went skew-wiff. Eg: ‘I haydid when my fridge gets carried out the back door!’ – another divorce . .

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I haydid – I hate it

‘Slunnin – East London; not in London

skew-wiff – not straight; not according to plan

Careful Where You Step!

Recording and reminiscing; with occasional bokdrols of wisdom.

Random, un-chronological memories after marriage, children and sundry other catastrophes.

– this swanepoel family –

My pre-marriage blog is vrystaatconfessions.com. Bachelorhood! Beer! River trips! Beer!

bokdrols – like pearls, but more organic. Handle with care

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Note: I go back to my posts to add / amend as I remember things and as people mention things, so the posts evolve. I know (and respect) that some bloggers don’t change once they’ve posted, or add a clear note when they do. That’s good, but as this is a personal blog with the aim of one day editing them all into a hazy memoir, this way works for me.