birds

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Greater Striped Swallow

Recently on a early morning walk while visiting in the Karoo, I found this Greater Striped Swallow sitting on the barbed wire farm fence while his kin was sweeping all over the show chasing insects. The Greater Striped Swallow, like all the other swallows you get around here, are summer visitors to our part of the world. They are fairly widespread throughout South Africa and can usually be seen perched on trees and fences or gliding over open, rocky or…

6 Comments
27/11/2009
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Cape Weaver

The breeding male Cape Weaver bird has pale eyes, a orange wash over the face and a black line from the bill to the eye. The females and non-breeding males are paler and look very dull compared to the breeding males. This last weekend we went camping at Sleepy Hollow and I spent some time by one of the pools in the river watching these guys building their nests. Its hard and arduous work. They would fly off and come…

7 Comments
05/10/2009
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Horse-a-flutter

Spending some time with the FIFA city profile film crew last week gave me the opportunity to observe the camera men very closely which gave me a lot of tips to try with my own photography. One of the spots they filmed at was the Horse Memorial here n Port Elizabeth. There is always lots of pigeons around and the camera man used two loaves of bread to attract them to the monument just to frighten them off again for…

5 Comments
27/09/2009
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SAMREC

I popped down to SAMREC in the Cape Recife Nature Reserve the other day to have a look at their new facilities. The South African Marine Rehabilitation Centre, SAMREC, has built a rehabilitation centre at Cape Recife to care for the sick and injured Marine Life of Algoa Bay and neighbouring coast line. Although they will specialise in marine birds, they will also rescue and look after mammals if it is required of them (and obviously if their facilities allow…

2 Comments
18/09/2009
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Straggler

On a recent visit to one of the game reserves close to Port Elizabeth, we found this lone European Swallow sitting on a fence. Most of the swallows have left up north already and the first thing that came to mind was "straggler". I can imagine him sitting there watching the sky and wondering if its really time to head north before winter arrives down here. For more great pictures where you can watch the sky like this little fellow,…

12 Comments
30/04/2009
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Glossy Starling

Today's post is for the birds. Literally for the birds. And knowing his interest in birds (and specially baby birds), I'm sure Max will enjoy the post. The Glossy Starling (Lamprotornis nitens) is a fairly common bird in our part of the world. When we pulled into our camp spot at Cannon Rocks between Christmas and New Year one of the first things I noticed was that there were four glossy starlings that were very active around the area and…

10 Comments
09/01/2009
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Birds of Eden

Seeing that we started touring down the Garden Route I decided to just continue and show you why it is such a popular tourist route. I may interrupt the tour every now and then to do other posts, but we will keep on making our way westwards.The next stop after the Tsitsikamma National Park and the Bloukrantz Bridge is Birds of Eden, situated just outside the town of Plettenberg Bay. Birds of Eden is the World's Biggest Free Flight Bird…

6 Comments
10/11/2008
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The Penguins at Boulders Beach

Boulders Beach is a sheltered beach made up of inlets between granite boulders, from which the name originated. It is a popular tourist stop because of a colony of African Penguins which settled there in 1982. Boulders Beach forms part of the Table Mountain National Park.Although set in the midst of a residential area, it is one of the few sites where this endangered bird can be observed at close range, wandering freely in a protected natural environment.From just two…

4 Comments
16/10/2008
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Kelp Gull

Today has been one hectic day. I am actually on leave for two days, but has four people from the office contact me during the morning regarding work stuff. Aaarrgggg!!! Anyway, we are also going away for the weekend to go and explore the little Karoo town of Cradock as well as the Mountain Zebra National Park. As it is it is after midnight already and we want to leave at 07:00 in the morning, I have run out of…

5 Comments
15/08/2008