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After returning from a very successful birding trip to Ghana, Nicola and I spent the first two weekends in January starting our South African lists for the year at Magoebaskloof and Mkuze Game Reserve.
Magoebaskloof started out wet. So wet in fact that the Veekraal dirt road from our Friday night accommodation to Kurisa Moya was impassable and we had to turn around when the X-trail couldn’t get up a muddy slope. We drove back to the R71 and took the tar road to Kurisa Moya, arriving at 6am instead of the planned 5am on Saturday morning. Our guide, David Letsoalo, thought we were arriving at 6 anyway so it worked out fine. But the mist and rain didn’t bode well for our birding expectations. David reckoned the misty conditions actually helped our chances for Cape parrot at least so that was first on the list. We drove deep into Woodbush forest and tried a few known perching spots for the parrots but no luck. But we did find Chorister robin-chat, Black-fronted and Olive bush-shrikes, Yellow-streaked and Sombre greenbuls. Finally, at the entrance to Woodbush forest, getting ready to drive down to Tzaneen, we stopped for a minute and David picked up on the parrots’ screeching. A quick fly-by enabled us to spot the Cape parrots, albeit just silhouettes through the grey mists. In Tzaneen we visited the Tzaneen dam wall and a local’s beautiful garden (for Magpie mannikins) before ticking Bat hawk at New Agatha forest and a few others back up in Magoebaskloof. In the afternoon, Nicola and I visited the twinspot hide by ourselves and were treated with fantastic views of two male and one female Green twinspots. On the Sunday David guided us around Kurisa Moya’s forested property where we had good sightings of Narina trogon, Yellow-throated woodland warbler, Chorister robin-chat and Grey cuckooshrike. Although we heard Black-fronted bush-shrike calling several times, we just could not locate these pretty birds. In some grasslands west of Kurisa Moya, we quickly picked up the star-attraction – Short-clawed lark – and added a few other birds for a total weekend list of 146 birds.
Compared to Magoebaskloof and our own high expectations of Mkuze, this top Zululand reserve turned out quite disappointing. The reserve has obviously had a very dry season and the Mkuze river and drinking holes were all but dried up and the veld looked horrible. This resulted in an almost winter-like experience with the birds – the birds seemed to stick mostly to bird parties and birding these were good, but in-between, the woodland was quiet and we were sad to miss out on Senegal lapwings for the first time since we started visiting Mkuze. Due to various reasons, we had the same guide for our night drive and fig forest walk – Patrick. He showed up late for the night drive and one of the spotlights wasn’t working – two owls and a nightjar that flew past the headlights had a good chance of being IDd if we had the second spotlight working. The fig forest walk was attended by a family with five tween- to teenaged girls, giggling and gossiping away on the entire walk. Worse was that Patrick actually managed to make more noise than the girls with his boots and constant speeches. It came as no surprise that we dipped on most of our target birds (Green malkoha, Scaly-throated honeyguide, African broadbill, African yellow white-eye) and also missed possible Olive and Grey sunbirds and a Lesser honeyguide when Patrick saw the birds, but failed to stop and quiet the group or attempt to re-locate it. The only ray of sunshine was when the father of the family spotted a tawny blotch in a tree across the Mkuze river that quickly became a Pel’s fishing owl upon inspection. Our rest hut in the camp also disappointed as our fridge wasn’t working (and wasn’t fixed after reporting it twice either) and it turned out that our rest hut was the only one without a braai. But despite all these negatives, we still enjoyed our birding, in particular the Ku-Masinga hide which produced fantastic photos of both birds and mammals. We put a lot of effort into atlassing six pentads in Mkuze and also out towards Muzi pans and ended the weekend with 161 species that included 12 new birds for Mkuze.
I now have 403 birds IDd in Africa so far this year and it's only half-way through January!
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