This is a voluntary working relationship with the City of Cape Town and the Cape Bird Club since 1978.
The weather was perfect, blue skies, no clouds to be seen and a slight N to NW wind blowing all afternoon. The air temperature was cool to slightly warm. The estuary mouth was open for the past full moon on 11 June, so the water levels were low. The pond with the reeds around it is almost at peak winter levels and there is a depression which is saturated with standing water to the east of the pond. There were no birds to be seen on the water or flying over the upper main waterbody all afternoon. There was a lone scout yacht sailing with the breeze.
Bert and I worked in the far north western section near the railway line where a number of Port Jackson saplings have turned into trees. Jacob joined us half way through as he had been working at the Fynbos Nursery today. Something we noticed was the sap is high in the stems already as the ground water and main water body levels have been kept high by the Reserve Management these 6 months of 2025. The sap usually only rises in the spring season, making sawing difficult as the wood fibres clog up the blade teeth very quickly and have to be cleared often to continue sawing.
While walking about there was evidence of small grass hoppers jumping about and no other insect species visible. We did see a few Painted Lady butterflies about I was not quick enough to photograph them. The Chasmanthe (Cobra Lily) are starting to bloom some in large patches. There was one shrub of the Tortoise Berry bush starting to flower which is early. The Chrysanthemoides monilifera (Bietou) are flowering in many places with no insects on the flowers presently. There is digging activity in some places which looks like porcupine and in a few places there was the spoor of 2 Grysbok.
We saw 15 species of birds with the Egyptian Geese the most seen species with pairs chasing each other about is territorial displays in many areas.
We do need some younger volunteers for this job, so if any of you out there are interested in helping you are assisting the Nature Reserve staff who cant cover all the bases they are responsible for. Contact me if you are interested.
See this link for the past reports of what we have done.
photographs by Gavin Lawson.
Gavin Lawson.
