Baillon's Crake - a skulker of note

Hi folks

Yesterday Jenny and I had the pleasure of finally getting to see this tiny bird. Niall Perrins joined us for the day, as he was still missing the crake in his quest for 800 in one year. We travelled to the Soutpan area,
north of Bloemfontein, to an area of flooded grassland. The exact coordinates were kindly posted on SABirdnet by Dawie Kleynhans, and further advice was given by Allan Ridley. Many thanks to them both.

After driving up and down the flooded area a few times (using the car as a hide) we picked up some movement below the barbed wire fence in a more thickly grassed area. Niall called out "There it is, there, there". Jenny caught a better glimpse than I managed. The bird then proceeded to skulk in its patch of thick grass! After half-an-hour of lurking balefully we gave up and pushed off to do some general birding. The area is full of shallow pans at the moment and numerous ducks, geese and waterfowl were on show.

An hour later we returned, mindful of our target - a skulker of note. We stopped at the clump of grass where it had previously skulked, to no avail. Moving slowly south, Jenny picked up some movement, once again just below the fence, and .... there it was! The sequence of photos below was taken over a period of about 90 seconds.

Skulking behind the first clump of grass



Out in the open, no submerged grass to sprint across



A half-decent photo in open water



before turning away from us



Cover within reach......



Phew, nearly there!


After skulking in the second patch of grass for a short while, the bird burst into view,
flying low in typical crake fashion to land in very thick cover some distance away.
That, as they say, was that. Quite a show!

Whilst nursing some much needed coffee, our satisfied trio were given a fly-past by an
African Marsh Harrier, and then departed back to Gauteng with "another one in the bag".

Happy birding!

Dullstroom trip report

 Yesterday Jenny and I spent a morning in the Dullstroom area, visiting the Dullstroom Nature Reserve in the first half of the morning with Chris Lotz and a group of other birders. The second half of the morning was taken up in Verloren Vallei Nature Reserve, along the gravel road to De Berg just east and north of Dullstroom. The weather in the early morning was cloudy, cold and misty; so what's new in that part of the world? Later on, the sky cleared and it turned into a glorious spring day, with a light dusting of mare's tails in an otherwise pearl-blue sky. The mountains and grasslands in that area all lie above 2000 metres, with the highest part of the gravel road to De Berg being at about 2200 metres above sea level. This is the view looking north at the start of the De Berg road:

We managed to see 51 species in a morning, which is not too bad for the region. Specials included Cape Eagle Owl (lifer), Buff-streaked Chat, Cloud Cisticola, Blue Crane, Red-winged Fracolin, Eastern Long-billed Lark, Long-billed Pipit, Yellow-breasted pipit, Sentinel Rock Thrush, Cape Vulture and Ground Woodpecker.

It was only the second time we have seen Red-winged Francolin and Yellow-breasted Pipit, so we were really pleased with the outing. Thanks must go to Chris Lotz, who is using the outings to raise money for Owl Conservation in the Eastern Cape. No doubt Chris will keep us posted regarding developments there. 

Here are a few pictures of some of the birds seen; I apologize for the quality in the pics of the owl and the francolin, but certain people who were with us yesterday may be interested to see them. The first photograph was taken at about 6.15 a.m. with the sun not yet up and the mist swirling around.So an ISO setting of 1600 was used, with a shutter speed of 1/50 th of a second. Ouch!

The camouflage of these owls was so striking; the colouration and markings are such that they blend into their rocky surroundings almost perfectly while roosting. Whilst watching the owls, our attention was drawn to a pair of darkish birds having a dogfight around the slope to our right, just above the bracken. These turned out to be Long-billed Pipits, and their camoflage is also pretty good.

 

 

On our way back to the cars, we came acroos some fairly obliging Red-winged Francolin:

 

Below are some photos taken during the second half of the morning, in no particular order.

 

          Malachite Sunbirds

 

            Cape Vulture                                                           

 Sentinel Rock Thrush

 

Eastern Long-billed Lark

                                           

  Red-capped Lark (note the red "shoulders")

           Yellow-breasted Pipit

Greetings

Greetings! Or as we South Africans sometimes say Howzit!

Being a new blogger, and a long-term member of Birdlife SA and LepSoc, I thought I would start this first blog with a few pics taken on a trip to Maputaland in northern Kwa-Zulu Natal earlier this year with my wife Jenny. We visited Tembe Elephant Park for the first time. I am mad keen (yes, mad and keen) about birds and butterflies, and mammals to a lesser extent. It can be exhausting, a day out in the bush looking for birds and butterflies. You see, birds are best seen from before dawn to about 10 a.m. and then from about 3 p.m. to after sunset and beyond. Butterflies, however, are active from about 9a.m. to 3 p.m. So a full day can be enjoyed!


Tembe Elephant Park is an amazing place full of Sand Forest, which is an endangered habitat that harbours of all sorts of unusual creatures.

















Some of the goodies we saw:

 













Lemon-breasted Canary

The white face patches are diagnostic.

Yellow White-eye

The yellow on the crown above the bill allows the twitcher to mark off this bird on their list. The bird bath near our tent was a convenient place for a quick drink in the heat of the day. By the birds, of course. And yes, we did have a nice hot cup of tea close at hand.....

The butterflies were not so good, mainly because the weather was very overcast and fairly cool. But we did see this denizen of the sand forest, in fact three of them were sucking at some moist patches on the ground near the dining area in camp. This is a Gold-banded Forester. The first time I clamped eyes on this creature as a schoolboy I suffered a fit of the trembles. 
 

 


I thought that this would be the best pic of the weekend, but.......











to crown it all, we came across this leopard taking a break on the cool sand road. Apparently, this is the first photograph of a leopard taken in the reserve. We were told that there are only about ten leopards in the whole reserve area of 30,000 hectares.

Well, there you have it, folks.


Look out for the next post!