The major attraction here is the very diverse waterbird community that arrives by the thousand in the occasional years that there is a big flood event, and the 2021/2022 summer was one of these. The flooded area this year extended across 60 kilometers and covered some 16 000 hectares. These big floods only happen about once a decade and they are linked to years of well above-average rainfall, as was the case this past summer.
Herons are typically the first to arrive and 16 species (including Rufous-bellied Heron, Slaty Egret, hordes of Squacco Herons, and Dwarf and Little bitterns) pitched up this year to feed on the fish glut brought in by the flood. Within weeks of the first arrivals, mass breeding got underway, the herons and egrets being joined by Reed Cormorants, Glossy Ibises, and others to establish large, noisy heronries in the reedbeds. A few months later their progeny, some seen in this photograph, were visible in abundance along the floodplain.
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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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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
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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.
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