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.