|
|
Top 10 birds for 2012
I only just managed to tick enough lifers to make up a top 10 list for 2012. Although I have seen some amazing birds during the cause of the year, I haven’t bird enough new spots to boast my life list in 2012. But the lifers I did get during the year were real humdingers!
10. Red-footed Falcon
In the number 10 spot I will start with my second lifer of 2012. For years I have hoped to find one of these falcons, but I have not really looked hard enough and exclusively for them amongst the big flocks of Amur Falcons. So in January, right after twitching Baillon’s Crake for Laine at Marievale, we set off for Devon with the hope of finding a Red-footed Falcon. It soon turned out to be like looking for a needle in a haystack! My effort to locate one doubled when Laine fell asleep after hours of fruitless searching. Great was my relief when I finally picked up this female. I sat there just staring at it with swearing thoughts in my head because it made me work so hard to eventually find it. I woke Laine up so that she could tick it and we headed back to Gauteng happy albeit perhaps more exhausted. Perhaps one of my most frustrating and hardest worked for lifers.
9.a. Victorin’s Warbler
Having visited the Garden route area of South Africa for many years I have always tried hard to tick Victorin’s Warbler without as much as hearing it. Last year December I got close when Johan and I birded the Swartberg pass outside Oudtshoorn when I finally heard one calling from a drainage line. In September this year I took my trump card in luck – Laine, with me up the Outeniqua pass with the girls to show them the scenery. Laine picked up a very unexpected Cape Siskin as a lifer whilst we photographed Orange-breasted Sunbird, another lifer for her. We heard the distinct call of a Victorin’s Warbler and after battling to pinpoint exactly where it was calling from, my daughter had it in view. I followed her instructions and could hardly believe my eyes when I laid them on this beautiful grey-faced Warbler. Finally I could put the ghost of Garden route to bed.
9.b. Bohm’s Spinetail
Came July we enjoyed a wonderful 8 nights in Kruger with the girls. Although winter time in Kruger meant that I could not expect to find many lifers I remained faithful in getting at least something out of the deal. Imax had spotted some Bohm’s Spinetails at the Pafuri bridge just a week prior to our visit there and it meant that I was going to spend whatever time necessary to see these bat-like swifts. A few minutes after getting out on the bridge and scanning through hordes of Little Swifts I picked up the distinct flight of a “bat” amongst them. Voila! Bohm’s Spinetail! The joy after ticking this bird after so many dipped efforts at this exact spot could not be described in words.
8. Chestnut-banded Plover
Not often will I sit at home over a weekend and get the report of an out of range lifer in my area. Well this was exactly the case with a pair of Chestnut-banded Plovers at Mkhombo dam. Over the same weekend a mega report for Madagascar Cuckoo in the Kruger National Park came in which was untwitchable for me due to time and financial constraints. So I was just too happy to go out and find the Chestnut-banded Plovers as a consolation prize. I arrived at Mkhombo late morning armed with my back up 400D Canon and 300mm Sigma lens and after failing to find the reported Common Whimbrels, picked up the gorgeous Chestnut-banded Plovers. It made the long tedious drive back to Pretoria on a Sunday afternoon more than bearable.
7. Lesser Black-backed Gull
For several years, Leeupan, south of Leandra in Mpumalanga have produced Lesser Black-backed Gulls. I have only visited this pan once before without any success and when the reports of this gull came in I decided that it was the ideal time to make my second visit there. Vanga and I shot out there and got horribly lost on our way to the dam due to road works in the area. We eventually located the dam and drove up to a few vehicles where birders were looking at the gull. In Vanga’s words: “This is how a rare bird should show itself”. After a couple of snaps we took on the long road back home – without getting lost!
6. African Skimmer
I remember my first attempted chase as a novice birder back in 2004. I read about an African Skimmer at Rooikoppies dam north of Brits in an edition of African Birds and Birding. Not exactly realizing that the copy was already a couple of months late on the report I still headed out there to go and look for the Skimmer – without success of course! My, my, my. How much rarity reporting has changed in recent years. Johan and Trevor and I were on our way back to JHB from Marievale after a successful Baillon’s Crake twitch, boosted with an awesome find in two Lesser Moorhens just outside Marievale, when Francois Dreyer phoned me all the way from Stellenbosch to inform me about the Skimmer in Carltonville that was picked up by atlassing birders that very same morning. After some debating amongst us in the group and phoning significant others to inform them about our plans to get home late, we shot out to Den Pan near Carltonville. A couple of minutes walk around the pan to the spot and there sat a very miserable looking young African Skimmer on a rock next to some Egyptian Geese. Completely lost! Good thing it turned out to be that we chased this bird that very same day as it disappointed hordes of birders the next day after doing a vanishing act. Something which Skimmers apparently love to do to twitchers and it wouldn’t just stop with this African Skimmer here as you will find out later on…
5. Red Phalarope
The Red Phalarope twitch was smack bang in the middle of an absolute crazy and wonderful 2012 birding spell for me personally. On my way back from Cape Town after my biggest twitch to date producing my undisputed number 1 bird for 2012 I read about this rarity via Trevor Hardaker whilst sitting in the plane at Cape Town international! The following day on a Sunday after a few phone calls, Vanga, Daan and I drove through to Belfast to the spot where Mark and his group had located the Phalarope. After some excellent directions from Boskat and Sue we arrived practically right on top of the Phalarope! It was feeding a few meters from us on a pan literally in the middle of nowhere, kilometres away from where it should be out over the open sea. My first Phalarope and what a special one it was closing off a super birding weekend.
4. Caspian Plover
One bitterly cold November week, yes, November, a few years ago, reports sufficed of Caspian Plovers in the Devon area. It turned out as not one, but two dismal dips for us when we failed to locate the birds on the Saturday and the Sunday despite other birders reporting the plovers from the exact same spot. Till this day I strongly believe that others have ticked the immature Kittlitz’s Plovers as Caspian Plovers over that weekend but nevertheless, we had to put the disappointment behind us and move on. Last year at Mkhombo dam during BBD the almost similar thing happened to me when we spend almost an hour in dying light trying to find a reported Caspian Plover amongst the big numbers of Kittlitz’s Plovers without any luck. So when I heard about Dylan Vasapoli and his group locating a Caspian Plover on the Kgomo-Kgomo plain over the same weekend I went to Cape Town and returned to Belfast for the Red Phalarope I decided that I simply just had to put in leave from work and head out to Kgomo-Kgomo to get a species which have caused so much distress in my birding career over the last couple of years. No sooner after arriving and scanning the plains I spotted this distinctly different looking plover amongst the groups of Kittlitz’s Plovers. I spend an hour with it winning over its trust and getting close enough to get reasonable photos with my 400D and 300mm lens. Definitely worthy to be my 3rd best bird of the year after previous years’ disappointments. To say that I was absolutely relieved to get this bird is a complete understatement.
3. Collared Flycatcher
Having had a helluva day personally on the day this rarity was discovered in Randburg, I missed the initial report due to problems with my daughter's flight down to George. I just couldn't believe my bad luck when Batmad phoned me where I was pacing up and down at the airport waiting for my daughter to get off a plane with engine problems, getting stuck on a bus for over an hour and having to get onto a new plane which ended up in a 6 hour delay! Was I going to miss this rarity?!?!
No, I was worried about nothing it turned out to be!
This bird was seen in Malcolm's garden, 2km's from my work in Robindale and it turned out to be perhaps the easiest twitch of a vagrant for me ever!! I popped in the next morning just before 5 a.m. and the bird showed well to about 50 twitchers on the morning. I returned later the day to snap better photos. What a moment!!
2. Corn Crake
Having had almost no previous chances of seeing this bird I was flabbergasted to hear that one had pitched up at Rob Geddes’ place in Buffelsdrift just outside Pretoria. I was unable to chase it down with the groups over that weekend as I was at Leeupan for the Lesser Black-backed Gull. So things boiled down to me heading out there on a Monday afternoon after work where Rob and a couple of others waited for me to start the search. Not having much hope as most of the birders over the weekend dipped on the bird I was just about to throw in the towel when someone spotted the bird in an alley between the saplings in the nursery. The fight to keep the adrenalin rush under control when you snap photos of a super special bird never seems to work, so my first few attempts were as blurry as hell. The others departed and teaming up with Rob’s daughter with her sitting at one end of the alley and me on the other end, the Crake came out to pose some more for much better photos! Seeing a Crake is always special, but seeing a new Crake is just mind blowingly special!!
1. Black Skimmer
My number one bird for 2012 is as mentioned earlier in this report, totally undisputed.
Read all about this trip here.
|
|
