Mid-May to mid-July 2021
HEADLINE NEWS
Despite the cold winter temperatures, the birding action zoomed right up to boiling point when news came through of the discovery of southern Africa’s first-ever Lesser Whitethroat. It had taken up residence in the trees around the carpark outside the Amazing Kruger View Restaurant in Henk van Rooyen Park, part of the greater Marloth Park area in Mpumalanga. Fortunately, the bird stayed loyal to this fairly small area for two weeks, during which time it attracted hundreds of twitchers.
Lesser Whitethroat is a small warbler species that occurs mostly in Europe and parts of Asia and during the boreal winter migrates into some northern areas of Africa, coming as far south as Ethiopia. Our bird was a long way out of the known range and is probably the first record for the southern hemisphere. Given the time of year, it seems to have been a fairly obvious case of reverse migration, in which after leaving its wintering grounds, the bird headed south instead of north and ended up down in the south of the continent.
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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.
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.
