Outing to Sunbird Centre, Clovelly, Fish Hoek.

 

Twenty keen birders joined me on the walk. It was good to welcome several visitors and some new club members who had braved the morning traffic to the first week-day outing for the new year.
The weather was cloudy but certainly not cool, the day being in the middle of what had so far been a very hot summer. No rain was expected and as there had not been any since the 9th December the vegetation was very dry. Fortunately the wind had abated – the south-easter can roar down the Fish Hoek valley for days at a time making birding quite difficult.

The usual exuberant birdsong was strangely absent but a pair of Ring-necked Doves and a Cape Grassbird could be heard in the distance whilst the resident Jackal Buzzard flew past giving a wonderful display of his / her aerial prowess.

Proceeding down the road towards the end of the Clovelly Golf Course we saw Cape Robin-chat.

In spite of the lack of rain the Silvermine River still had a little bit of water running along its course. The White-throated Swallows breed under the little bridge where the river runs across the road and carries on along the side of the sand dunes towards the sea. There is only one nest there this year but the birds were flying above and alongside us as we made our way down the road.

Birds were very few and far between up on the mountain slope and one can only think that the very dry conditions, together with the heat, was a contributing factor.

The list of birds seen but mostly heard, in all a total of 26 different species.

Pied Crow                                               Cape Grassbird
Ring-necked Dove                                 Cape Bulbul
Jackal Buzzard                                       Southern Boubou
Cape Robin-chat                                    Egyptian Goose
White-throated Swallow                        Fiscal Flycatcher
Malachite Sunbird                                 Yellow Bishop
Brimstone Canary                                 Cape Canary
Karoo Prinia                                          Southern Masked Weaver
Cape White-eye                                    Common Waxbill
Sombre Greenbul                                  Red-winged Starling
Southern Double-collared Sunbird       Southern Fiscal
Greater Striped Swallow                      Bokmakierie
Barn Swallow                                       Peregrine Falcon

My thanks to all who attended.

Photographs by Daryl de Beer and AM Moore.

Report by Gillian Barnes