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!