Rocherpan is a relatively small reserve (1080 hectares), a slice of land sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and a fairly busy road, but the combination of ecosystems – a seasonal pan/wetlands, marine/beach environment and strandveld vegetation – offers a variety of bird habitats. More than 183 bird species can be found here, including 70 waterbirds. A full bird list is available on the CapeNature website or at the reserve’s reception. In the three days we spent in the sanctuary, even as birding novices we managed to see and identify approximately 60 species relatively easily.
The pan is obviously the main feature of the reserve and there are three bird hides where you can while away the hours watching water birds and waders. Greater and Lesser flamingoes, Kelp, Grey-headed and Hartlaub’s gulls, Avocets, Black-winged Stilts, cormorants, ducks and geese in great numbers bathed, fed, slept and squabbled in front of the hide. Caspian and Swift terns settled among the gulls, while Kittlitz’s, Three-banded and White-fronted plovers and sandpipers worked their way along the pan’s shoreline. African Oystercatchers were ever-present, sometimes in pairs, but often in small groups. Rocherpan is one of the Cape Shoveler’s most important breeding sites and we were glad to see a pair drifting along on the water.
Just alongside the bird hide, Cape and Southern Masked weavers and Southern Red Bishops kept up a continuous chorus in the reeds. An older, unused bird hide further down the pan seems to have been appropriated by a Rock Kestrel as a base for its hunting missions.
Esta historia es de la edición January - February 2021 de African Birdlife.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición January - February 2021 de African Birdlife.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Keith Barnes, co-author of the new Field Guide to Birds of Greater Southern Africa, chats about the long-neglected birding regions just north of the Kunene and Zambezi, getting back to watching birds and the vulture that changed his life.
footloose IN FYNBOS
The Walker Bay Diversity Trail is a leisurely hike with a multitude of flowers, feathers and flavours along the way.
Living forwards
How photographing birds helps me face adversity
CAPE crusade
The Cape Bird Club/City of Cape Town Birding Big Year Challenge
water & WINGS
WATER IS LIFE. As wildlife photographer Greg du Toit knows better than most.
winter wanderer
as summer becomes a memory in the south, the skies are a little quieter as the migrants have returned to the warming north. But one bird endemic to the southern African region takes its own little winter journey.
when perfect isn't enough
Egg signatures and forgeries in the cuckoo-drongo arms race
Southern SIGHTINGS
The late summer period naturally started quietening down after the midsummer excitement, but there were still some classy rarities on offer for birders all over the subregion. As always, none of the records included here have been adjudicated by any of the subregion's Rarities Committees.
flood impact on wetland birds
One of the features of a warming planet is increasingly erratic rainfall; years of drought followed by devastating floods. Fortunately, many waterbirds are pre-adapted to cope with such extremes, especially in southern Africa where they have evolved to exploit episodic rainfall events in semi-arid and arid regions. But how do waterbirds respond to floods in areas where rainfall - and access to water - is more predictable? Peter Ryan explores the consequences of recent floods on the birds of the Western Cape's Olifants River valley.
a star is born
It’s every producer’s dream to plan a wildlife television series and pick the right characters before filming.
