Down at the Cape

Back in December 2019, I went to South Africa for a family holiday with my wife, our lad and daughter-in-law. We had a loose itinerary, spending a few days in Cape Town before heading north to a game reserve at Aquila, and then driving on to Knysna which is on the south coast for a few days, then west to Hermannus for another couple of nights before driving back to Cape Town airport and coming home - a glorious two weeks holiday! I'm not going to bore you with a load of bird listings, as this wasn't a 'birding' holiday, but thought I might share some of the more notable sightings we had along the way.
We started our holiday with a trip up to Table Mountain (which is fantastic!) Birds of note here were Red-winged Starling, White-necked Raven and lots of Speckled Pigeons - and of course - the good old House Sparrow!

Red-winged Starling

Speckled Pigeon

Stopping off at Camps Bay as we returned to our hotel, African Oystercatcher and Hartlaub's Gull were to be found in the bay.

Hartlaub's Gull

African Oystercatcher

We visited Cape Town Botanical Gardens (we do love to go to botanical gardens wherever we are!!)

and despite the rain, added quite a few birds including Cape Wagtail, Cape Whiteye, Cape Turtle Dove and Southern Double-collared Sunbird (anything that started with 'Cape' was a lifer for me - and there are quite a few!)  The lad and his wife had gone off in a different direction from us but called us to say they had found an owl roosting. They walked back to meet us and took us to see it - how he found it, i really don't know, but from then on I called him Hawk-eyes! 

Cape Wagtail

Cape Spurfowl

 Olive Thrush

Cape Whiteye

Cape Turtle Dove

Cape Canary

Cape Robin-chat

Spotted Eagle Owl (definitely 'bird of the day')

Can't go to Cape Town without visiting Boulders Beach.......

African Penguin

African Penguin

Kelp Gull with nesting material

Rock Hyrax (Dassie) sunning itself on the boardwalk at Boulders Beach

......and of course, we really had to go down to Cape Point and The Cape of Good Hope!! This is an amazing reserve, and the birds of note here were Ostrich, Fiscal Flycatcher, Cape Widowbird (Yellow Bishop) and Malachite Sunbird

Male Ostrich

Female Ostrich

Fiscal Flycatcher

Malachite Sunbird

Cape Grassbird

We did manage to squeeze in a 'proper' birding day so we decided to visit the Strandfontein Sewage Works which proved to be very productive. This is more of a wetland now with just a small area given over to the sewage works. Lots of water birds were seen, and in good numbers; theses included Greater Flamingo, Cape Shoveler, Hottentot Teal (great name!!), Maccoa Duck, Red-billed Teal and Cape Teal and there was a tip not far away with lots of Kelp Gull swirling around with White Stork - both in massive numbers and an impressive sight to see!  We also saw Yellow-billed Duck, White-faced Whistling Duck, Cattle Egret looking lovely in their breeding plumage, Red-knobbed Coot and a couple of raptors - African Marsh Harrier and Yellow-billed Kite. I got talking to a local birder who was keen to share with me an African Jacana (which is not a common bird for this site) and helped me to find the Hottentot; whilst looking at these ducks a wader flew across my vision which I followed, only to see it land on the water. My first thought was a Phalarope-species and I said as much to the local lad who got extremely excited, and, as the bird alighted from the water, he managed to view it. Luckily, the bird flew towards us, circled and came back down onto the lagoon, and, sure enough, it was a Red-necked Phalarope, which is a real rarity for the area. The local birder very quickly put the news out and was extremely happy, and a 'twitch' ensued!  All in all, a great day!

Here are just a few images of the thousands of birds we saw at this site

 African Jacana

Black-headed Heron with his lunch

Blacksmiths Plover

Black-winged Stilt

 African Pipit

Cape Shoveler

Cape Teal

Cattle Egret

Cape Weaver

Greater Flamingo

Just a few of the Hartlaub's Gulls

 Hadeba Ibis

Red-billed Teal

 White-faced Whistling Duck

Black-necked Grebe

 Hottentot Teal

We left Cape Town after a very enjoyable few days, and drove north to Aquila Game Reserve for a two night stay. This is a really nice private reserve covering 18,500 acres. We had a few game drives and below are some images of some of the wildlife we were lucky enough to see - but surprisingly, we didn't see that many birds! - The birds of note on the reserve were African Spoonbill, African Shelduck, Mountain Wheatear and Ringed Plover with other birds around the accommodation and restaurant area including Familiar Chat, Rock Martin, Karoo Scrub-robin, Cape Siskin, Southern Red Bishop and Southern Grey-headed Sparrow

 Eland Gazelle

Black-backed Jackal

African Elephants

 Giraffe

 Giraffe - trying to hide!?

Hippos leaving the pool at dusk for their nightly forage

 The dominant male

 One of Africa's few remaining Rhino's

 Rock Hopper

 Springbok

 Zebra (a.k.a Donkey in pyjamas!)

Zebras having a dispute

African Reed Warbler

 Cape Bulbul

Southern Red Bishop 

Cape Sparrow

 Southern Grey-headed Sparrow

 Cape Siskin

Mountain Wheatear

 Southern Masked Weaver

Chacma Baboon searching the bins as we left the refreshment station on the reserve

Large male Chacma Baboon

On leaving Aquila, we continued south to the coastal town of Knysna for a few more days. The accommodation gardens were the most fruitful, bird-wise. Amethyst Sunbird, Fork-tailed Drongo, Brown-hooded Kingfisher, Streaky-headed Seedeater and Common Waxbill were just some of the birds to be seen. We went across to Knysna Headlnds where, despite heavy rain, we still managed to see Bar-throated Apalis, Southern Boubou and African Dusky Flycatcher, along with a pair of nesting Peregrine

African Dusky Flycatcher

Amethyst Sunbird

Bar-throated Apalis

Fork-tailed Drongo

 Southern Boubou

 Southern Double-collared Sunbird

Brown Hooded Kingfisher (in the rain)

The final leg of our journey was west to Hermannus. The local birder we met at the sewage works had told us to look out for Blue Cranes in the stubble fields on the road to Hermannus, and also gave us site for the elusive Rockjumper on the road from Hermannus to Cape town. We passed many miles of stubble fields and thought we were going to miss out - but finally - Blue Cranes!

Blue Crane

We were only at Hermannus for two nights,and we had one day booked for cage diving for sharks so not much time was left for any birdwatching, but we did find a small reserve very close to where we were staying called Fernkloof Reserve which turned up Cape Sugarbird (at last!) along with Helmeted Guineafowl, African Paradise Flycatcher and Sombre Greenbul. The shark dive was a great experience, and although we didn't see any Great White (they hadn't been seen for a couple of weeks), we did have amazing encounters of 'Bronzies' (Copperhead Sharks) which were about 3 metres long. Very exciting to see them so up-close and personal! 

 Male Cape Sugarbird

 Female Cape Sugarbird

On our final day, we set off early and took the coast road back to Cape Town (approx 75 miles), calling in at Rooiells en-route, hoping to see the Rockjumper, as this is a well known site for this species. Despite spending a good three hours looking for it, it wasn't to be - but we did manage a few more new birds, which ended our holiday on a high; Ground Woodpecker, Cape Rock Thrush, Cape Bunting and brilliant views of Orange-breasted Sunbird

Cape Rock Thrush

 Cape Bunting

 Orange-breasted Sunbird

132 species were seen, with almost 80 new birds for me - not bad for a non-birding holiday! 

South Africa is a great holiday destination, with fantastic friendly people wherever we went. 

I haven't finished downloading all of my images yet (I did take quite a few!!) so I will be posting anything I think you might like to see.

As always, thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed the images of the birds (and animals) of South Africa.

Summer Butterflying!!

Well, its been a while - but I haven't done any big holidays yet and birding has been  mainly at my local patch, Brascote gravel pits which has been fairly quite. It's started to pick up recently, with a Garganey which actually hung around for a few weeks, and two Great white Egrets - which are getting a lot more common in the county.  I've done a couple of twitches - one down to Cornwall for the Brown Booby and then to Anglesy for an Eastern yellow Wagtail..... but no images I'm afraid.  In the summer when birding goes quiet, lots of birders turn to other flying creatures like dragonflies and butterflies. I'm trying to see and photograph all of the butterflies of Britain (of which there are 59);  at the start of the summer, I had seen 48, so I was keen to add a few more to list this year. It started on the 15th of May, when, along  with my mate Ben Croxall, we headed for Bison Hill in Bedfordshire for the Duke of Burgundy.  We saw the butterfly but didn't manage to get any images which gives me a great excuse  to return at some point!
Again with Ben, on the 22nd May, we went to the Wyre Forest in Gloucestershire in search of the Pearl- bordered Fritillary; this is a great site and we saw lots of these butterflies.

 Pearl-bordered Fritillary

 Underwing of the Pearl-bordered Fritillary

(note the 'ducks head' -the orange patch with the black spot -  which is a good field characteristic)

 Pearl-bordered Fritillary

On May 27th, I went to Strumpshaw Fen (an RSPB Reserve in Norfolk) with my good friend Dave Gray in search of the Swallowtail. After walking around the reserve for three hours and almost giving up, we came upon a group who  told us they had seen one in some scrub-land close to the carpark; it was only a couple of minutes later that we saw this stunning butterfly in flight (but again, no images - so that's another site I will have to re-visit!)

My wife and I had decided to visit Wadebridge in early June to go to the Royal Cornwall Show, so we made arrangements to meet the warden of Lydford NT (near Okehampton) who had very kindly agreed to take us to Lydford Gorge in the hope of seeing Heath Fritillary and Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. Again, what a great site - and we managed to see both species.Many thanks to Colin for sharing his time and knowledge with us.

 Heath Fritillary

 Heath Fritillary underwing

 Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary

 Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary

My wife had been saying how she would like to visit Osborne House again (on the Isle Of Wight) as she hadn't been there in many a year, so we decided that we would try to kill two birds with one stone by visiting sometime in June, to coincide with the flight period of the Glanville Fritillary. This is probably now one of  the only reliable sites left in Britain for this particular butterfly. We found ourselves at Compton Bay, however the weather was far too windy, with gusts of upto 50mph, so no joy. We returned the following day, and despite it still being very breezy, it was warmer, and we spotted the individual below on the footpath!  This was our one of only two butterflies we spotted, so we were very happy. As an aside - Osborne House is amazing and well worth a visit.

 Glanville Fritillary

 Glanville Fritillary

In a beautiful day in early July, Dave and I went in search of the Large Blue at Daneway Bank in Gloucestershire. My first observation on entering the site was the vast amounts of Marbled Wite butterflies on the wing; I've never seen so many at one site! After an hour of looking for our quarry, we eventually saw some, including a couple who were mating. 

 Large Blue

 Large Blue

Large Blues mating

I am pleased to be able to say that my British Butterfly list now stands at 55; only left 4 to get - but one will need a trip over the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland for the Cryptic White. It's a hard life!!

As always, thanks for stopping by to read of my exploits. It won't be so long before my next blog this time, as I'm going to South Africa in the not too distant future........