Ringing at Paarl Bird Sanctuary today

Quite a good days ringing this morning, despite the fact that it is very cloudy, cold and with light drizzle every now and then.  The Southern Red Bishops are busy changing into the breeding gear, some more than others.

There were plenty of warblers, Little Rush, Lesser Swamp and the migrant African Reed Warblers are back!

After the ringing, I took the opportunity to drive around the sanctuary to see what else was there.... and there was lots.  A lovely big pelican, sitting all by itself to start with.

And a White-throated Swallow was waiting for me when I came out of the hide.

At the Kingfisher dam, I found a lone Purple Swamphen, I haven't seen one for a while.

There were plenty of gulls, hartlaubs and grey-headed.  This guys looks very handsome.

And there were flocks and flocks of Cape Canaries, all over the place.

On one of the back pans, I found a whole group of Greater Flamingos... so beautiful.

Chicks and young birds are everywhere.  The white flamingos above are juveniles and I came across an African Black Duck with a clutch of babies...

and then I came across Mrs Blacksmith Lapwing who tried her best to hide her 2 fluffy balls.  I struggled to  get my camera to focus on them as they are so well camaflaged.

On the way out of the sanctuary, I almost drove straight past about 20 male Pin-Tailed Whydahs and about 20 females.  They were deep in the grass, feeding with Cape Canaries and Swee Waxbill.  I have never seen so many males together.  Some of them were immatures just coming into their male breeding plumage.

All in all a great days birding... even with the security risk, it is still a wonderful place to go birding.

Val de Vie visit

I love it when birders are happy to brave the bad weather for a spot of birding... Thanks so much to Cynthia and Jill who joined us this morning when we went with the Tygerberg Bird club to Val de Vie.

A young student living on the estate had to organise an event for a school project and he organised a bird census for the estate.  Well done Jeremy Collins. 

Our first stop was to investigate 2 huge Hamerkop nests.  There was plenty of birdlife all around these nests and it was a good start to the morning.  Aparently there was a Hamerkop seen but I didn't get a pic of it, however, I did see one at our Fish Eagle site earlier this week which I managed to photograph.

We drove around the estate and stopped at some spots to walk around but the weather wasn't being very friendly. We found the first Cape Hoopoe of the season as well as the first Greater Striped Swallows.

I was happy to see some Crowned Lapwings which I hardly ever see down here in the Cape.

We found Red-capped Lark and African Pipit at the Polo fields, 3 banded plover, water dikkop, spurwing goose and the members of the Tygerberg Bird Club were very excited to see Jackal Buzzards a couple of times.  Our resident Fish Eagle even came flying overhead to say hello to them.

At the stream we found African Black Duck and on the little dams we found lots of Yellow-billed Duck and a mom with her babies...

and beautiful African Darter in deep black breeding colours, first time I have seen him like that.

We spotted 59 birds in all and while doing the bird list back in the Lifestyle centre, someone spotted a Giant Kingfisher sitting at the top of someones house.

A great mornings birding, despite the weather. 

Black-crowned Night Heron

Jill Heistein has been telling me about her daily walks to the picnic dam across the road from her house for many months now.  She sees a wide variety of birds there including weavers and water birds.  Recently she was lucky enough to spot this Black-crowned Night-heron while out walking with her grandson, Oliver, who took this lovely photo.

I have never seen this bird in Franschhoek so will be keeping a beady-eye out for it.  Perhaps we can have a little gathering at this picnic dam one day in Spring.

Bird Ringing at Wild Flower Garden

Saturday morning, Robyn and Adel and our guest, Felicity Ellmore, went bird ringing in the Wild Flower Garden.  It was a wonderful warm day and the birds were buzzing all around us. 

We ringed about 50 birds, most of them White-eyes.  I can't believe there are still White-eyes that I have not ringed yet. One of the White-eyes had some feathers missing from the top of beak.  Not sure why.

We also caught our first Yellow Bishop, still in non-breeding colours.

We also caught a very handsome looking Southern Masked-weaver and he had a strange mark in his eye.

A cheeky Speckled Mousebird was hanging around but refused to fly into the net so didn't get to ring him.... this time!

I have started my own personal bird blog so feel free to have a look at it here.

Lynedoch Winter List

Last Saturday (7th of Aug), a 3-person team set off to do the winter bird list at Lynedoch Eco Village as a follow-up to the Summer list we did in January.  In total, we listed 30 birds, 17 of them the same species as in January but 13 of them were totally different  birds. 

Thanks to Jill Heistein for joining us for the morning.

There was much nest-building by the Cape Weavers in full breeding face flush

 and Southern Masked Weavers in full face mask.

Lots of Cape Sparrows, something we don't see in Franschhoek so much anymore.

And there were plenty of White-backed Mousebirds to keep us entertained.

 Cape Robin-chat, my namesake.

 We stopped off at Spier after the listing to add a few more birds to our atlasing card and found this sleepy African Darter on the water.

And we took photos of the weavers nest for the ADU's virtual museum (for more info on this new interesting website, click here).

Amethyst Sunbirds chicks have hatched

We were very excited to hear the faint "cheep cheep" call coming from the Amethyst Sunbirds nest in the big fir tree in our garden.  Even better is that the nest is right outside Room 28 on our first floor and we can get great views of the parents who are killing themselves feeding these hungry little mouths.

Daddy bird on duty

They are back and forth every 5 minutes so hopefully we will be able to get even better pics as the days go on.  The nest is facing slightly away from the building so we don't have 100% clear view but we can see the little beaks with their huge yellow gapes very clearly.  So sweet.

Mommy bird on duty

He is such a handsome fella

See the big yellow gape?  Just to make sure that mom and dad know where to put the food.

Open Wiiiidddddeeeeee

And lets not forgot about Mrs Hadeda sitting on her nest at the moment....

We are putting up with the early morning raucous but they sure are loud!

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