Friday 29 September 2017

Some scenic shots from South Africa

 Augrabies waterfall - nearly dry because of drought
 Blue Moon Bay Hotel Gardens, Saldanha
 Endless Karoo near Poffadder
 Cape of Good Hope - Atlantic Ocean
 Cape of Good Hope - Indian Ocean [take from same spot]
 The Iconic sign

 Klein Cedarberg at dusk and my chalet
 Ceres escarpment
 Kgalagadi at dawn
 Kgalagadi red sand
 Klein Cedarberg main complex
 Cedarberg rock paintings
Table Mountain complete with tablecloth

Cape Town area

We spent the last three days of our trip around the Cape Town/False Bay area and visited The Cape Of Good Hope, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Strandfontein Sewage Works, Gordon's Bay promontory, Stony Point Penguin Reserve, Harold Porter Botanical Gardens and even went on a Pelagic Trip [although this wasn't one of my highlights due to sea-sickness 2 1/2hrs into a 9hr trip].

 African Penguin
 Booted Eagle
 Cape Cormorant
 Cape and Bank Cormorant
 Cape Francolin
 Cape Rockjumper
 Cape Sugarbird
 Cape Teal
 Cape White-eye
 Crowned Cormorant [immature -I think]
 Egyptian Goose
 Orange-breasted Sunbird
 Red-winged Starling
 Rock Kestrel
 Southern Boubou
 Spotted Eagle-Owl
 Spotted Thick-knee - keeping an eye on me while facing the other way
 Southern Double-collared Sunbird
 White-breasted Cormorant
Helmeted Guineafowl

South West lowlands

This area covered comprises of Bontebok NP, Angulhas farm fields, Potberg escarpment and Da Hoop NP, which lie to the east of the Cape by about 200kms. All the areas have their specialist birds and we saw them all. Bontebok NP in particular was magical, with birds around the river plentiful and some quite rare for the area.

 Black-headed Heron
 Blue Crane
 
 Brown Hooded Kingfisher

 Malachite Sunbird
 Martial Eagle - immature
 Southern Red Bishop
 Olive Pigeon

 Brown-throated Martin
 Great Double-collared Sunbird
Hartlaub's Gull
Yellow-billed Duck

Thursday 28 September 2017

Off the fynbos back up to the Karoo

We left the coastal fynbos behind and headed back up to the Cedarberg mountains where we again spent 2 days exploring the area and the south part of the Karoo. We searched for and found most of the speciality species of the area while staying at the Klein Cedarberg Private Reserve complex, which was one of the most relaxing experiences anyone can have. The stars at night were incredible and the birding wasn't to bad either.

 Chat Flycatcher - I think
 Blue Crane
 Cape Weaver
 Cinnamon-breasted Warbler
 Cape Wagtail
 Cape Robin-chat
 Familiar Chat
 Karoo Eremomela
 Laughing Dove
 Southern Masked Weaver


 Speckled Pigeon
Karoo Long-billed Lark