Golden pipit twitch (Pongola Nature Reserve) Dec 2010

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• List of birds

A report of a sighting of Golden pipit at Pongola Nature Reserve last week sparked spending sprees all over the country and as the days went by and people kept on reporting the bird at the same spot, we decided to give in to pressure and go off on our first mega-twitch. My parents arrived on Friday afternoon from the Cape for the holidays but despite the long drive, my Dad eagerly joined us, leaving on a horrible drive at 2am on Saturday morning. With five Stop/Go road works sections and truly horrendous road surfaces between Piet Retief and Pongola, the drive would've been bad enough. But to make matters worse, heavy fog settled on the escarpment and even when dawn came, the mist only gave in reluctantly. We arrived at Pongola NR shortly after 7am, drove down the main track as per directions and we just got to the intersection where I was about to drive the last 30m to the exact GPS coordinate when Nicola spotted it. In full display and not shy at all, it flew between the trees, perched, spread its wings, called loudly, chased some Rattling cisticolas, down into the road... this carried on and on. Eventually we moved on to do a bit of birding in the rest of the reserve, adding a pair of Lanner falcons close to the dam, a Yellow-billed stork and a Pearl-spotted owlet as highlights. Twice we drove past the pipit site where people were constantly coming and going, never without success. With a long way to drive back, we left just before noon, taking it slow through all the road works. We took the same route as in the morning (via Amsterdam) to skip out road works between Piet Retief and Ermelo, and were well rewarded with an Osprey sitting on a telephone pole. We were back home just after 4pm. It was a long and tiring day but as I discovered later that this was apparently only the 12th record of Golden pipit in the country, it was certainly a very satisfying day!