Since the new year rains the garden in Westville, KZN has been bursting with noise and activity.
Overhead the fish eagle and crowned eagle, the goshawk and the YB kite; In the trees the trumpeter and crowned hornbills; In the garden toppies (black-capped bulbul), yellow-bellied bulbul, GT and cardinal woodpeckers, brown-hooded kingfisher and FT drongos dipping into the pool for a bath and after drowning insects. black and dusky flycatchers, the first paradise flycatcher, golden-rumped tinker, scaly-throated honeyguide, black-collared barbet, white-eared barbet, black-headed oriole, white-eyes, camaropteras, TF prinia, bar-throated & yellow-breasted apalis, black-bellied, redwinged and glossy starlings; Hadedas probe the lawn, hamerkops inspect the pool; Pied crows and gippo geese sit on the high office building above us. Black, Klaas’, Diederiks’ and piet-my-vrou cuckoos.
In the shrubbery the natal robin (red-capped robin-chat) calls and mimics and a trilling noise tells me there are firefinches or (hopefully) twinspots around – haven’t been able to spot them yet. Boubous and puffbacks lurk. Red-eyed doves, mousebirds, Indian ringneck parakeets screech as they whizz past overhead.
Amethyst, collared, white-bellied and olive sunbirds. Bronze and black-and-white (redbacked) mannikins and YF canaries love the seeds in the long grass, swaying on the thin stalks; Loud louries arrive and chase each other around before stopping for a drink; The woodhoopoes are also loud; Spectacled and spotted-backed weavers compete with the sunbirds (and the vervet monkeys!) for the nectar in the strelitzia flowers; Forest (dark-winged) weaver sings his lovely high-pitched squeaky song; The streaky-headed canary also sits and sings happily; At night (late, 3am) the wood owl calls pondo, pondo no-shilling and earlier the nightjar says good lord deliverr us as the francolin settle down noisily.

Gotta have jungle and scrub and hideaways for birds. And a dripping tap.
Tag Archives: birds
Rain and Meals on Wings
At last some good rain. And the flying ants are out in force! Wings and scurrying bodies everywhere, clustered around our lights.
“We’ll have fat geckos and I hope the owls and nightjars have a feast, Tom! Even the monkeys will love it if they’re still around tomorrow”
Grumble grumble I don’t like them he mutters. Then Why don’t the monkeys come out at night? Are they too scared of leopards? he asks.
“I think so”, I say. “I think its bred into them that night-time is dangerous and it’s not their time to eat.”
wings and bougainvilla ‘petals’ – this guy is lovin’ it
Hwow! Hwange is Hwonderful!
One of Aitch’s list of ‘things to do’ once we knew she had cancer, was to visit her twin sis in Botswana. Janet quickly mustered her network and arranged a trip to Hwange, Zimbabwe’s wonderful big national park. We’d been once before – also with Janet. Her friends Beks and Sarah Ndlovu of African Bush Camps own a concession and run a very special camp at Somalisa in the south-eastern area called Linkwasha.
Beks calls it his Hemingway-style camp. We called it bliss. Unpretentious tents from the outside, luxury inside.
The weather was amazing! Bright sunshine, then huge gathering clouds, then pouring rain and back to sunshine in a few hours. Repeated daily. Enough rain to bring out the bullfrogs – the first time I have seen them, not for lack of looking. They were out for their annual month of ribaldry: Bawdy songs, lewd & lascivious pixicephallic behaviour. Lie still honey, lemme love you! Also gluttony. Then hastily raise a bunch of different-looking kids, and it’s back underground for 11 months of regrets. I was a bit wild; I wonder if she’ll still respect me next season?
The rainstorms were spectacular!
We were dry under the Landcruiser canopy and enjoyed every minute of the downpour. Once, unbeknown to us, Janet at the back had water pouring down her neck and was getting freezing wet! She didn’t want to spoil the beauty and awesomeness so suffered in silence. When she told us back in camp we roared with sympathetic laughter as she turned the air blue with choice expletives!
After the rain there’s sunshine, and the bush telegraph page is wiped clean: New spoor becomes clearly evident. Aha! The lions and cubs passed this way!
After a good soaking the animals would have to drip-dry. We could get under cover and have hot showers, hot drinks and warm dry clothing.
I think Hwange has become my favourite of all Africa’s big parks. It is simply fantastic.
Those sand roads are very special, smooth and quiet; a breakfast spread on a termite mound out on Ngweshla or Kennedy pans is special too.
Prologue – I had dashed off an email to Aitch in February 2009:
Hi Aitch – As ‘they’ so crudely put it, we need to ‘shit, or get off the pot’ as far as a decision to get to Okavango and to Beks Ndlovu’s camps this year. Either soonish (March), or September / October (very hot). We must decide yes or no, and if yes, who could we leave the kids with? Dilemma – K
–oo0oo–
So glad we stayed on the pot! The kids were fine; We got to Botswana eleven months after that email, in January 2010, then flew to Kasane, where Karen & Mike Bullock kindly hosted us; Then Janet trekked us on into Zimbabwe for Aitch’s last – great, unforgettable – Hwange trip.
We’d been before in 1997.
~~oo0oo~~
Luxury Birding
Finally got round to making a collage of some of the birds we saw up in Zululand a few years back. Aitch and I went for a breakaway luxury weekend. It was dry – very dry – and the lodge had a water feature running right under the sundeck. Every bird from miles around (as well as all the animals) had to come here to drink.
It was perfect! Aitch was not so strong, so we chose to skip the game drives and ensconced ourselves comfortably on the deck, binocs, camera and telescopes handy. Tea or beer or coffee or gin would arrive at regular intervals. A casual wave would see them added to the bill. For dinner we walked ten metres back into the dining room! Breakfast was back on the deck.
Just past this popular bathing spot a waterfall plops into a pool where animals come to drink, And prance – like reindeer.
~~oo0oo~~
Back Story – True Confessions:
What are you doing for Trish on Friday? asked Feroza, my super-efficient practice manager.
Why? Am I working? I asked.
NO-O, it’s your 20th anniversary!
Oh.
It’s Wednesday already, so my mind starts racing. After 20 centuries it slows down and needs this kind of wake-up call. This jolt of OMG, I better not cock this up!
What is the last thing in the world that I would enjoy? I asked meself (gotta avoid the accusation of giving things for HER, when they’re actually for YOU)? It’s late notice and I’m working on Saturday, so I’m looking for a one-day something somewhere.
I know: The thought of lying around on my tummy in a spa for a few hours in daytime while someone slobbers oil on me sounds like what Beelzebub will probly sentence me to when I go to His Place, so I start looking for day spas and then I get the genius idea (or I spose really, the departure from the purely noble, selfless intentions): What about a spa in a game reserve where I can watch birds and other creatures while Aitch spas! Hmm . . .
Aha! A quick search turns up Thanda Zulu, 20km north of Hluhluwe.
That means just for the day is out, so I impose on Feroza (again) and I’m released from Saturday work. Now I’m booking a night in a game reserve. Um, with a spa. This doesn’t seem so hard anymore.
On the website I go to booking and click on online booking and payment. As the page disappears heading for the one that takes your credit card for melting, I catch sight of two things: R6100pppn and “phone direct for savings deals.”
So instead of committing online, I phone Johannesburg up in the hinterland and the BEAUTIFUL, gorgeous lady on the other end books me at R1950pppn. “Local special – You are South African, right?”. Rrrrraaait, I roll my RR’s and regret there aren’t any R’s in Swaaanepoel.
And so we ended up at a Zululand bushveld game reserve in the middle of a long drought with a water feature below a deck five paces from a pub. Aitch had in the meantime gleefully sold the kids to friends, getting in the spirit of adventure as she always did. So its double gin and tonics for me, erbil tea for her, while watching birds drinking and bathing in clear running shallow water on smooth rocks (OK, artificial rocks, but beautifully done) seated in a deckchair, binocs and camera in hand.
We skipped the game drive that evening in favour of lurking around the deck. Ditto the morning drive. Her spine couldn’t take the bumping. Our VW kombi was of course fine – smooth!
Aitch went off to her “treatments” (which I didn’t think she needed – ahem). And although she loved them, she hurried back whenever they were over and appropriated her camera back from my amateur and forgetful efforts). Because of the cancer, Meme the resident therapist, refused to do the massages Aitch had been looking forward to. “Can’t stir up the lymphatic circulation, darling!” she admonished, peering over her bright pink designer spectacles. So Aitch had more time at the waterhole than she would have – and loved it!
Our stay was a mere 24 hours, but it seemed longer and we saw, up-close and personal, 48 species of birds. In all my years of hanging out at waterholes I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a parade.
~~oo0oo~~
Early Morning Aerial Dogfight
Today’s the third morning I’ve watched an urgent, furious ruckus in my front garden in Westville, KwaZulu Natal. A bird screaming its head off while furiously chasing another like a fighter jet in hot pursuit. An aerial dogfight. So fast that I couldn’t get a good view as the target dashed in and out of the copse of trees and shrubs. I was facing into the sunrise which meant even when I got a half-decent glimpse it was of a silhouette with his beak open, screaming like a banshee. Interesting! Made me late for work!
I figured the pursuer was a Black-collared Barbet, and if so that would be a hole-nest parasite he’d be chasing – which would be a honeyguide. But I needed to see. Yesterday I got a good view of the pursuer: Red face and throat, stout beak. That was him alright.
Today I got a glimpse of the suspect: White outer tail feathers. Most likely a Lesser or Scaly-throated Honeyguide. I’ll try to make sure, but I don’t think he’ll be sitting still in plain view anytime soon. I wonder if it’s the male, and while the barbet is doing his over-zealous patrol, his lady friend is plopping her egg in the hole nest?!
I do sympathise with the barbet, but I’m afraid I’m on team honeyguide – I hope they lay their egg in the barbet’s nest so a luta (the struggle) can continua!
~~oo0oo~~
scaly-throat and lesser (all internet pics)
~~oo0oo~~
Minding Father
Tom is at Lungelo’s but he has to be at Kip McGrath extra maths at 8am so I call him and remind him to be at the gate at 7.15 sharp. Lungelo stays in the Westville Prison grounds.
He’s not that wide awake when I get there and protests at having to wake early AND do work IN THE HOLIDAYS! Do I understand the concept of “HOLIDAY”?
We’ll stop at Spar and get you something to drink and eat and you’ll be OK once we get there, my boy.
Well, I’m going to sleep straight afterwards and can I have a Monster energy drink please?
OK, fine.
Outside Kip he eats his smoked beef slices and sips his Monster. I watch a black-headed oriole and a golden-rumped tinker in the trees around us.
When its time to go in he says Please don’t let anyone finish my Monster. Put it in the fridge for me. (He’s going to walk home).
Take it with you and sip on it while working, I suggest.
No, he says, They’ll think you’re a bad Dad.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Bliss
I heard a cry on high as I parked on the roof at work. Glancing up I saw two crows cartwheeling, freewheeling, locking claws and spiralling like a propellor high above me. What a magnificent display of flying excellence!
Buzzing around above and below them was a drongo, divebombing and harrassing them, cheeky little blighter. They ignored him and carried on exuberantly showing off. Wow!
Isn’t that amazing!? I said to my 74yr old carguard Bridget as she shuffled up asking “And now?“.
I pointed out the birds.
“Yes,” she says off-handedly, “Those two parents are teaching the young one to fly”.
It’s bliss, it is.
She has taught me about marine mammals too, young Bridget, my Scottish carguard: https://bewilderbeast.org/2018/10/15/bottleneck-bliss/.
The evening sky from my rooftop parking spot
Day Off
I made a fat sarmie like they make you on a Wilderness Walk in Mfolosi: White bread, tomato and onion, all thick-sliced and buttered, lots of salt and black pepper. Took the binocs to the stoep and munched, washing it down with tea (ignoring the notion that Greenpeace has just tested a bunch of teas and found many have traces of pesticides).
There was movement at the birdbath (there always is). Great! A female Black Cuckooshrike! She’s beautiful!
Also a Redcapped Robin-Chat, a Dusky Flycatcher, two sunbirds, hadedas, toppies & white-eyes as always – and these Purple-crested Touracos.
Made me completely forget I was dodging my day-off chores.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Two Birdies on One Hole
So I’m playing in an official sponsored optometric tournament at Umhlali in the 80’s. Golf. The 80’s was the era, not the score.
A challenging short hole over reed-filled water. Surprisingly, I drive the green. I think my foot slipped.
Walking off the tee, I spy a flash of yellow in the reeds (did I mention it was a water hole?). The reed plants, not my playing partner Stephen Reed.
Something about it is a bit different, so I out with my extra club, a Zeiss Doppelfernrohrë* : It’s a Brown-throated Weaver – a first for me (or a “lifer”).
I calmly sink the putt.
This second birdie helps me almost break 100 for the round.
~~oo0oo~~
* binoculars to you
Good Advice in Kenya
Aitch and I went to Mombasa in 1998 and checked in at a hotel on Diani beach. The next day I got a lift into town and walked the crowded streets of Mombasa looking for a cheap hired car. Mombasa is quite a place:
I did my sums. I’m meticulous. Not.
While I was on safari hunting hired cars, Aitch chilled on the uncrowded beach and pooldeck, no doubt quaffing ginless gin&tonics. She used to do that, you know! Tonic & bitters. Ginless! I know! You’re right; Search me; Where’s the medicinal value? The personality enhancing factor, PEF? Still, she loved it.
After careful stalking, keeping downwind of my prey and pinpoint aiming, my lone hunting expedition was successful; I found a lil Suzuki jeep. Marvelous. I could turn round from the drivers seat and touch the back window! Almost. I knew they were good cos my chairman Allister told me, and he knows things, him being a Suzuki driver himself. Also JonDinDin once drowned his in the Tugela estuary, pulled it out and it still worked. We had wheels!
Good Birding Advice: Back at the hotel I went for a walk, leather hat on my head, binoculars round my neck. An old man came cranking along slowly on a bicycle, swung his right leg high up over the saddle and dismounted next to me.
‘Ah!’ he said,‘I can see you are English.’ I didn’t contradict him. ‘You are looking for buds,’ he said, also in a way that made me not argue. ‘There are no buds here,’ he said emphatically. ‘If you want to see buds you must go to the west, to the Impenetrable Forest. There are many buds there.’ After I thanked him for this sage advice he put his left foot on the pedal, gave a push and, swinging his right leg high over the saddle, wobbled off. After a few yards he had a thought, slowed, swung off in the same elaborate dismount and came back to me: ‘But in this hotel over here you can see some peacocks in the garden,’ he informed me re-assuringly.
‘Ah, thank you sir. Thanks very much,’ I said, wishing him well and thinking of Kenya’s 1100 species of birds – eleven percent of the world’s total. The USA has about 900, and the UK about 600. He was a character a bit like this:
Good Traveling Advice: We also got pessimistic advice on the roads. We were on our way to Tsavo National Park the next day and we wanted to avoid the main road to Nairobi. We’d heard it was crowded with trucks and buses and we’d rather avoid that, if at all possible. On our Globetrotter map I found a little road south-west of the main road – an alternative route via Kwale, Kinango and Samburu.
‘No you can’t; No, not at all; There’s no way,’ says everyone. Even the barman! Even after I said, And Have One Yourself! he still said no. ‘The bridge has been washed away by cyclone Demoina,’ they all said. This was a bit weird, as Demoina had been in 1984, fourteen years earlier, and had mostly hit Madagascar, then Mocambique, then KwaZuluNatal, well south of Kenya.
Usually I can eventually find ONE person to say ‘Don’t listen to them, the road is FINE,’ but this time I was stymied. No-one would say ‘Yes!’ nor even ‘Maybe.’
SO: We headed off along the road toward Kwale anyway. ‘Tis easier to seek forgiveness than permission, we thought. Aitch, what a trooper, was right behind me in adventurousness and right beside me in Suzukiness. ‘We’ll see new places,’ was all she said. She knows me.
As we neared Kwale a minibus taxi approaching from the other direction did a strange thing: They actually flagged us down to tell us ‘Stop! You can’t go this way! The bridge is gone, Demoina washed it away!’ We nodded, acted surprised, looked grateful, agreed, and thanked them kindly; then we kept going.
And they were right: The bridge over the river between Kwale and Kinango had indeed washed away. But there were recent tyre tracks down to the river which we followed. Below and just upstream of the iron wreckage of the bridge we stuck the Suzuki in 4X4 and crossed the low river. Then we stopped for a break, parking our mini-4X4 under a beautiful shady tree on the river bank:
And we were right: Besides being devoid of traffic, the road surface was mostly good, sometimes great:
Then the honeymoon ended: We ran out of detour and got back onto the main, ‘tarred’ Mombasa-Nairobi road at Samburu: Aargh! Every so often a blob of tar would threaten to cause damage. Huge holes had the traffic all weaving from side to side so trucks seem to be coming straight at you, but it’s actually quite safe, despite Aitch occasionally putting her feet up against the windscreen and yelling at me that there was an oncoming truck. Like I couldn’t see it. Its rather like slow-motion ballet. Most cars and all trucks went slowly, the only vehicles ‘speeding’ – probably up to 60km/h – were big passenger buses with their much better – softer, longer travel – suspension.
Years later, we can find the place where the bridge had washed away on online maps. Here’s the new bridge and new road on the right, with the old road just left of it, and just left of that, the drift we crossed (just left of the yellow arrow) and that beautiful tree in the top picture (red arrow) that we rested under. All the long red mud scar is new road- wasn’t there back then. The old road shows as a thinner, lighter line.
Then we got to Tsavo! I’d wanted to visit Tsavo since I was ten years old, and read books by Bernhard Grzimek. Armand Denis and others! Well, here I was, thirty years later! Yavuyavu! Fahari!
~~oo0oo~~
Yavuyavu! Fahari! – Joy, happiness, yes!
Michael J Allard, the witty, talented painter of the wonderful old man on his bicycle, lived in Zim on a farm, and in Ireland. He died in 2021.
Over the Edge
I ask Tom not to wee over the edge of the patio, but rather to go into the garden, find a shrub and wee discreetly behind it. More than once I ask him. Yes Dad, he says, shaking off the last drops.
Early one morning as the sun rises I watch the feathered parade in the old dead avocado tree. I’m going to miss that tree when it finally platzes. Already I’ve sawn off the big branch overhanging the driveway as it was full of bracket fungus and ready to dent someone’s car. I have planted a Natal Mahogany underneath to succeed it one day.
The white-eared barbets fluff themselves up in the early rays and two black-collared barbets land and go through a spirited two-puddly (or “Scottburgh”) duet. A group of purple-crested touracos bound across the branches, an olive thrush peeps and lands, as does a female violet-backed starling, a brownhooded kingfisher, a forktailed drongo and a speckled mousebird, all using the tall bare branches as a waypost or a sunning spot.
I’m busting for a leak but I don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want to go inside and I don’t want to disturb the birds by going off the patio, so I discreetly have a leak over the edge of the patio outside Tom’s bedroom window. It’s early. I’m sure he’s still sleeping.
But he spots me and I know I’ve blown my credibility.
I feel I need to explain, so at breakfast I tell him about the wonderful dawn display and not wanting to disturb the birds. He nods.
Not too long after that morning there’s Tom, weeing over the edge of the patio in full view. I bite my tongue. I know what’s coming.
Dad, he says mock-solemnly, I didn’t want to disturb the birds.
Dads Know – not much
I encouraged Jess to shoot some videos with her 2011 xmas-prezzie Canon camcorder. Set it up on the tripod, showed her how and said “Go for it, girl. Get footage of Black Sambucca the lazy labrador, or birds in the birdbath. Experiment!”
Over lunch I press her: “Let’s see what you‘ve done”. Much giggling and No Dad!, but I insist on looking.
Loud sounds of International Love by girlfriend-beater Chris Brown and Pitbull, with Jess dancing joyously to the beat dressed in her hiphop best.
Dogs and birds indeed!!
wu wei
My garden is a wonderful tangle of KwaZulu indigenous growth gone wild. Interfered with only by my best man Tobias Gumede’s earnestly-felt desire to do something besides pulling weeds! He’s a GARDENER, so why does he get told: Do Nothing!?
Recently he trimmed the undergrowth near the birdbath and the spot where beautiful turquoise Araneus apricus spins her web each night and takes it down every morning.
I had to sit him down and remind him:
Tobias, my good man, remember when we listened to the yellow-bellied greenbul’s complaints (nickname Belly-aching Bulbul) and you told me how it was saying “Don’t shoot the birds, it’s Spring and they’re nesting?” And how you would teach the kids in Jozini not to shoot birds in that season – and how they did anyway!?
Yep, he remembers.
Well, its Summer, and remember: We don’t trim or cut anything till the season fades and we’re sure no birds or other creatures are nesting. And even then we do it with great circumspection? Lots of ‘easy-does-it’?
Oh Yes, He Does Remember and Sorry, He Forgot.
But he forgot again and as I was leaving he asked, Can You Buy Me A Rake? Um, what for, Tobias? Oh, Yes, He Forgot, We Don’t Rake. Right.
Well, I mention this because I have recently found out that unbeknown to me, I garden according to the ancient principle of wu wei. I mean, I always suspected my method was brilliant, but wu wei! That is brill. Its the Zen (or Tao? – or something . . ) art of “masterful inactivity.”
I love it: “The Art Of Masterful Inactivity”! Wu wei! I can do this!
I’m reading a book by Esther Woolfson who lives in Aberdeen in Scotland, called Field Notes from a Hidden City. The review of her book made me want to write about all the wonderful hidden creatures in my garden and generally in Westville, so I bought it with the express intention of plagiarising it. I’ve got to the part where she writes about wu wei and I’m right behind her.
“Less is more.” German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe popularized this slogan among designers around the world in the 1950’s. And the wisdom of this aphorism goes way, way back to the time of the great Lao Tzu, ‘venerable master.’ The concept of Wu Wei became mainstream in China, where great leaders came to see the power of “non-doing.”
I read a lot about books and then occasionally I buy one and actually read the whole thing. Often the book review is better than the book. I bought Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck by Eric G Wilson. Well, it was a very good review.
Back to plagiarism: I will write to Esther and tell her what I’m doing if I get the book done. My wu wei credentials are not confined to gardening, however, so she may be safe.
Here’s the manicured bit for soccer, rugby and biking, with refuges for creatures in front and behind. When the kids stop swimming the pool will be made more frog-friendly. Made? Well, ‘Allowed To Go’ frog-friendly . . . .
So how did I know the beautiful little turquoise orb spider I found in my garden was Araneus apricus? I went to my saucers. This one is seldom in her cups: My favourite entomologist and arachnologist Tanza said:
Hi Pete – I think she is Araneus apricus, a little orb spider. Most are nocturnal, spinning their webs in the early evening and then removing them in the morning. Maybe she got out of bed late . . . ; It is probably a “she” as the males are often (but not always) smaller.- TanzI first met Tanza when she was working with social spiders on the Hella Hella bridge over the Umkomaas river. Hundreds of them obligingly spun webs between the aluminium railings, allowing Tanza to mark and measure at leisure. Usually they’d be in tangled bushes!
They’re fascinating. For one thing, like me they can balloon off and fly away!
~~oo0oo~~
Tanza Crouch’s 9 research works with 278 citations and 2,858 reads, including: The influence of group size on dispersal in the social spider Stegodyphus mimosarum (Araneae, Eresidae) – researchgate.net
The Dawn (chorus) Is Nigh
Barry Porter was – rightly – immensely proud of the birdlife on their Hella Hella farm on the Umkomaas River in KZN. We would sit on their stoep many weekend mornings over the years discussing the dawn chorus we had heard before rising, which was ongoing as we drank our early morning coffee and chorus. Barry would tell us how, In all his travels, no place had ever rivalled THIS dawn chorus; “His” dawn chorus. The Hella Hella Dawn Chorus.
He did have a bit of an advantage, what with 5000 acres, numerous different habitats, twenty years of indigenous planting and the the beautiful Krantzes, cliffs, grasslands and the Umkomaas valley!
On a rare visit to the big smoke, he and Lyn stayed with us at 7 River Drive Westville and at breakfast he said in awe: This is the first place I’ve been where the dawn chorus rivals Hella Hella! I knew that, but I’d been diplomatic all those years! We were on the banks of the Mkombaan River and had recorded 121 bird species in River Drive, and found evidence of breeding in 20 of them – nests, eggs, chicks or fledglings. Our dawn chorus, too, was magnificent fo sho.
Now, our new place, 10 Elston Place Westville was a horse of a completely different kettle of tea (and that phrase was a FreeState Reed-ism), when we got here seven years ago. There was one native strelitzia – the rest of the weeds were foreign nursery plants. The main trees were an avocado, a flamboyant, a loquat and a row of Aussie camelfoots.
Aitch and I soon changed that and this morning I woke up to hear an AMAZING dawn chorus!! Shades of River Drive.
Black-bellied starlings, dark-backed weavers, Westville Kookaburra (the brown-hooded kingfisher), olive sunbirds, bulbuls, white-eyes, turacos, white-eared barbets, drongos, prinias, both mannikins, puffback, boubou, francolin, ‘our’ robin, sombre and belly-aching greenbuls, GT woodpecker and all their cousins were singing, shouting and laughing at 10 Elston Place.
What a joy!
~~oo0oo~~
Terry Brauer warbled:
That is awesome Pete! Summer is on the way and I will bet Aitch is part of that chorus!!
Mike Lello honked:
You mean to say the tenor clarinet – he who never pays attention to the conductor and plays with great volume and gusto – was absent? I have 4 curved-beaked unemployed youngsters on my roof desperate for an audition. Ha Ha (Hadeda!)
Steve Reed chirped: Ibises, Mike, I’m guessing? Maybe not. Breeding well in Queensland. They have a strong presence at any sidewalk cafe anywhere in Brisbane. Especially where French fries are on the menu.
I replied: Yep. I’m sure Mike was mentioning the dreaded Greater Westville Pterodactyl – the HaDeDa, Bostrychia hagedash. I always thought the species name was hadeda, but I looked it up now: hagedash! Young David once rose from a deep n hungover sleep and shot one on his Mid-Illovo farmhouse roof for playing the tenor clarinet with great volume and gusto without paying attention to the conductor. It had got stuck on that everlasting repeat mode we all know, and paid the price.
Here are two lurking Greater Westville Pterodactyls above our roof, perched on the dead avocado tree, waiting to let rip: Ha Ha (Hadeda!)
~~oo0oo~~
An Owl!
In fifteen years at 7 River Drive we didn’t see or hear a single owl. Wasn’t for lack of trying. We saw and heard A LOT of birds at magical River Drive. Standouts for me that I can recall right now were Pigmy Kingfisher; Bush Blackcap; Spotted Thrush; Olive Bush Shrike; Narina Trogon; Grey Waxbill; Black Sparrowhawk; Black and Grey Cuckooshrikes; At night Buff-spotted Flufftail and my first discovery of what a Fork-tailed Drongo can get up to way past his bedtime. Both of those involved long nocturnal searches.
In two years at 10 Windsor we heard a Wood Owl a few times, which was magic. The furthest south I’d heard them before was Zululand.
After seven years at 10 Elston I had heard Wood Owls and caught one glimpse of an owl (?Barn Owl) flying over the house, but TONIGHT I finally saw a Spotted Eagle Owl sitting in our dead avocado tree!
Heard him first while hanging curtain rails in the cottage. Went out and there he was staring at me. 11pm.
Wonderful!
~~oo0oo~~
pic from theflacks.co.za – thank you – wonderful bird pics