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Having to go to Port Elizabeth for work, I managed to stay for the weekend to do some birding. Dr Paul Martin of Bird & Eco-tours took me around Tankatara salt pans and the Swartkops river estuary on the Saturday and on Sunday I drove myself up to Addo National Park. I met Dr Martin at his place at 6am and after the short drive to Tankatara we started adding new birds for my year-list: Malachite sunbird, Little stint, Pearl-breasted swallow, Kittlitz's and Chestnut-banded plovers, Black-necked grebe, Ruff, Lesser flamingo, Curlew sandpiper, African marsh harrier, Southern black korhaan and Cape clapper lark. The weather was overcast and very pleasant and the birding fantastic! We stopped for coffee and muffins just before the collapsed bridge over the Sunday's river and while munching away got good views of White-fronted bee-eater and Lesser honeyguide. Towards the bridge itself we noted a couple of Horus swift in between the more common White-rumped and Little swifts and in the reedbeds below got nice views of Lesser swamp warbler. A couple of Water thick-knees and a single African purple swamphen added to my 2015 tally and as we were driving back out from Tankatara, Dr Martin spotted a Southern tchagra on top of the thickets. We both got a quick view before it disappeared. We reached Swartkop's estuary back in PE as the tide started receding and visited several of the salt ponds and other small dams in the area. New birds for 2015 included Eurasian curlew, Osprey, Rudyd turnstone, Common whimbrel, Little and Caspian terns. Low tide was at around 11:30 and with the sun now blazing down, we approached the mud flats closer to the ocean. From a distance we could see Bar-tailed godwit and Terek sandpipers along with bunches of the other more common waders but we only got better views when we walked across the slippery mud where millions of mud prawn breathing holes bubbled in the receding tide. Two Greater sand plovers were the last ones added to the day's list before we headed back home. We managed to see a whopping 117 species between 06:30 and 13:00! It really was a brilliant morning's birding and Dr Martin was an incredibly knowledgeable and helpful guide and highly entertaining company! I contemplated still going to Cape Recife for the afternoon but after some thought, I figured chances were very slim of me adding anything new there and I was quite buggered after a poor night's sleep and the morning's birding. It turns out I also did not apply sunscreen early enough as I noted a few nasty red rings around my neck in the shower. So I spent a relaxing afternoon at TyDay guesthouse and got an early night's sleep.
Approaching the southern Colchester gate at Addo National Park on Sunday morning, I got some nice birding done with Karoo scrub-robin, Bokmakierie, Neddicky, Grey-backed, Cloud and Zitting cisticolas, Karoo prinia, Acacia pied barbet, Jacobin cuckoo and a few others all seen on the scrubby plains outside the gate. As the road rose gradually up into a kloof where the entrance gate was, Sombre greenbuls out-whistled all the other bird calls and I started seeing the proper Addo thicket vegetation the park is known for. Inside the park, the birding came to a standstill. The thickets were, well, so thick, that it was like driving in a tunnel and unless a bird was sitting on top of it, there was no way you would see anything. I only added a Greater double-collared sunbird (seen), Bar-throated apalis (heard) and Olive bish-shrike (heard) by the time I reached the first grasslands. This was much more productive and Steppe and Jackal buzzards joined Black-winged kites and Amur falcons hawking above a strolling Secretarybird. I saw another Jacobin cuckoo and a couple of Black cuckoos but heard not a single cuckoo calling. The day's weather was going to add to the difficult birding though - by 8am I swear it was already beyond 30 degrees C and absolutely breathless. Approaching the public road dividing the Colchester side from the Main camp's side, I added a Verreaux's eagle but just before 10am it was so blindingly hot that I gave up and wound up the windows and switched the A/C on. I puttered around a bit around the Main camp section but by noon I had enough and after a quick stop at the Domkrag dam to pick up a few water birds, I left. My sum total of birds for the day was 64 - just over half Saturday's count. So lesson learned for future - Addo is not the best place for birding (it was also ridiculously busy - like Pilanesberg on easter weekend) and although it otherwise looks like a nice enough reserve, especially the Main camp, I think I'll stick to other spots for birding in the PE area in future.
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