South Africa, the February Limpopo to Natal trip

So, having thawed out from Canada, i was ready for some nice hot bush action! We were a team of 6, Lee Gregory, Simon Evans, Ken and Sandy Griffin, from the UK and Step Wilson from California!

We did the usual circuit, starting north from Johannesburg up to the Limpopo, then back south via the  Lowveld and greater Kruger area, up onto the highveld Grasslands and the Amur Falcon roost in KZN.

for raptors we did pretty good, 73 ringed of 18 species including 22 Steppe Buzzards and highlight was a Tawny Eagle. For mist netting we did ok with 210 birds of 93 species caught, probably the best was getting a River Warbler, quite a rare bird in SA and a couple of Olive Tree Warblers, not a lot of them caught in SA either.

The falcon Roost at Newcastle produced 12 Amur Falcons and one Red-footed Falcon, some 20-30 thousand birds were present.

 

Lee and Simon with a pair of adult BC Snake-eagles

Palm Swift

Step and the 2nd year Tawny

Tawny head

Lee and an adult Jackal Buzzard

adult Wahlberg's Eagle 

Olive-tree Warbler

River Warbler

couldn't ever catch enough of these!

the Amurs coming into roost

Greater Double-collared Sunbird

the one Red-footed Falcon we got out of 13 falcons.