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Sunday 3rd Feb 2002.
Went walking through the fields and round the village of Napier this day. It was intended as a brisk walk, but we were held up by the sight of Blue Cranes on the crest of the hills; buzzards on the fence posts; and by the unexpected beauty of the countryside, with hills, green and gold in dappled light.
Three Malachite Sunbirds flitted around us as we walked up a dirt road towards the mountain. The male, only ten metres away, sat still, or hovered over the fynbos in full sunlight, so that I could see its green body and the bright blue of its wings and head.
“Green” said Nicholas.
“Blue” I said.
“Green. Emerald Green.”
“Okay, I will retreat to a position of dark marine green-blue”.
Whatever the hue, the sunbirds with the diagnostic wedge in their long tails, were a memorable sight.
Nearby were numbers of White Storks – and in that light I could see their bright red beaks clearly. Who said I was colour-blind?
Above us wheeled three raptors. Soaring in circles, lazily – until one would suddenly swoop to attack the third. We could not identify them with certainty – though we could distinguish the wedge tails and solid wings of two of them. The third was the stranger they were attacking; a raptor, slightly bigger, with a longish more straight tail , and the primaries on its wings clearly visible, as with most vultures. It also had a clear “bite” out of each wing. Jackal and Steppe Buzzards, we guessed.
Down by the stream we saw two interesting birds – a warbler and a chat I thought, but we were late on our walk and had no time to stop to identify.
Driving back to Hermanus, Arlene and I noticed, only about 30 metres from the roadside, a great black bird in the grass. I thought it must be a harrier ( this was its territory) – until we saw its unmistakable silhouette; its great beak and the white between its shoulders. A Black Eagle, standing on the ground, upright and perfectly still. Best sighting I’ve had of one in the wild, away from a known nest.
NOTE; Write about the pair of Black eagles skimming over our heads in the mountains above Vogelgat, as one carried a small furry creature in its talons to feed to the ungainly white juvenile in the cliff-nest opposite us.. And how the juvenile was “taught” by its parent how to dive.
Also Onrus River – of Little Blue Heron fame – once again became the focal point for South African twitchers at the beginning of this month when HBC members John and Sheelagh Bowman discovered not one but two rare vagrant species on the rocks at Haarder Bay. These were a European Black-headed Gull in full breeding plumage, and a North American Franklins Gull, which was about half-way out of breeding. To have two off-course vagrants from two different continents on the same 100 metre stretch of beach is really the most incredible co-incidence. |
