Birding-wise it’s been an interesting year. It’s getting harder and harder to get southern African lifers and this year we only added eight new birds. In April we had a big road trip throughout most of Western Europe; although we did clean up a great many European/western Palearctic species, it wasn’t all about the birds. We visited friends and family, explored Venice and the Swiss Alps, hunted for cuckoo clocks in Germany and drove through some of the smallest countries in the world.
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| Exploring the Swiss Alps |
In June we made our first (and only) dash for a vagrant bird – a Malagasy pond heron – and it turned out to be one of the best twitches we’ve had with the bird showing exceptionally well.
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| Malagasy pond heron |
In late September we made a long weekend excursion to the Erongo region of Namibia. It was ridiculously hot throughout our stay but we did manage to pick up five of our ten target birds – Damara red-billed hornbill, Ruppell’s parrot, Rockrunner, Carp’s tit and Benguela long-billed lark. The first weekend in November we paid
Etienne Marais to help us look for Short-tailed pipit, Melodious lark and Black-rumped buttonquail. It was money well-spent as we ticked of several Short-tailed pipits early in the morning just outside Mabusa reserve and after a bit of a search, managed to see and hear one of the best bird mimics we’ve ever come across – a displaying Melodious lark. We did put some effort into looking for Black-rumped buttonquail too but only scared up some Common buttonquails. Late November saw a kind of irruption of Harlequin quails as these suddenly started appearing regularly on Rare Bird News Reports and we caught onto this action by first seeing an individual at Rietvlei in Pretoria and shortly thereafter flushing three birds at Buffalo gorge just 20kms from home.
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| Benguela long-billed lark |
Our atlassing efforts this year were pretty good as we completed just over a hundred cards. Although we came close several times, a century card is still eluding us, mainly because we rarely stay in a place longer than 4-5 hours.
In a few weeks’ time, I’ll depart for my last trip this year: Colombia. I’ve been keen to visit ever since I started seeing progress in the fight against the drug cartels and a subsequent peace-deal signed. Due to its unique location with coasts both on the Atlantic and Pacific, a direct connection to central America creating a thoroughfare for American migrants and most importantly, the great Andes chain splitting up in three cordilleras in Colombia, essentially forming two massive inter-Andean valleys hot with endemism, Colombia has the most bird species of any country in the world and is listed as a megadiverse country. Traveling to Colombia on my own would’ve been very expensive but I managed to find another birder keen to join (Lisl van Deventer) and we negotiated a pretty decent 3-week deal with
Colombia Wild Ecotours. However, several political decisions in South Africa towards the second half of the year forced our currency’s exchange rate into a tailspin and our trip ended up costing almost R10,000 more than what we had budgeted for initially. The additional costs didn’t end there; at the end of October, Lisl discovered that Colombia had suddenly decided that South Africans need visas. A mad scramble to secure these was successful, but at almost R2,000 it was more expensive than any other visa I’ve ever applied for (including US, UK, Australia and Schengen) and the whole process and requirements is very poorly explained and ambiguous. But at least we now have everything in place (we hope) and we can start getting excited about this trip.
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| Colombia itinerary |
At this point you may have noticed that Nicola is not going with to Colombia. So having explained the birds part of my story, this now brings me to the bees part.
We’ve been trying to fall pregnant for more than a year without success. We did all the tests and then proceeded with fertility treatment until finally, in August, Nicola fell pregnant. We are therefore very pleased and excited to announce to the world that we’ll be adding one more to our family by the end of May 2018! So this is the reason Nicola won’t be making this trip with me – I’m in part very sad that I can’t have my partner and best friend to share experiences on this trip but having a baby has been one of her biggest dreams and I’m extremely pleased to see her so happy as well (not so much about the accompanying morning sickness and having to fend for myself food-wise).
The Colombia trip will therefore probably be my last major trip (at least into disease-ridden tropical areas) for a while; our focus is going to shift somewhat after May 2018.
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| Baby Vrey |
So that’s it folks, from both Nicola and myself, we wish our friends and family a pleasant and relaxing holiday season. Drive safe wherever you go and come back fresh for 2018!
