During a game drive along the Mphongolo River near Sirheni Bushveld Camp in the Kruger National Park, we noticed a Goliath Heron stepping out of a large pool in the river with a catch wriggling in its beak. It had snagged a rock-catfish Austroglanis sclateri. The bird walked onto a small rocky outcrop adjacent to the river, dropped the prey onto the ground and proceeded to stab it. After jabbing at it a number of times, the heron took the prey, now covered in sand, in its beak, climbed down from the outcrop and walked back into the shallows of the pool, where it rinsed it thoroughly. This process of stabbing the fish on the outcrop and then washing it was repeated at least a dozen times. Towards the end, the bird held the fish by its tail and, if it still wriggled, stabbed it again.
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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.
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CAPE crusade
The Cape Bird Club/City of Cape Town Birding Big Year Challenge
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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.
