Bird of the week – Week 55: Diderick cuckoo
At that time of the year when spring is moving towards summer, a new bird call, familiar from last year, is heard with growing frequency throughout most of southern Africa, excluding the really arid...
Author: Rob
The Bishops of Avis
The summer rains arrived in Windhoek, Namibia, during December and the transformation that these showers wrought to the landscape was both immediate and spectacular. With the greening of the vegetation, the insects, the animals...
Bird of the week – Week 54: Cape glossy starling
A Cape glossy starling seen in bright sunlight reflects a particularly striking colour – an iridescent dark blue that shimmers vividly as the bird moves and the sun dances off its feathers. If it...
Bird of the week – Week 53: White-throated canary
The White-throated canary is locally common within the shrubland and gardens in the drier eastern parts of the southern African region, to which it is a “near-endemic” (its range includes only a small part...
Bird of the week – Week 52: White-browed sparrow-weaver
A common sight in trees throughout the arid and semi-arid regions of southern Africa are untidy balls of dry straw, often several clustered in close proximity to each other and seeming to favour the...
The Whistling Rats of Rooiputs
In 1284, so the story goes, the town of Hamelin in Germany suffered a plague of rats. A little man dressed in a motley pied costume arrived in town and offered to rid Hamelin...
Bird of the week – Week 51: Yellow-billed kite
During July and early August a large brown bird appears in the skies over southern Africa, preferring the wetter parts of the region and avoiding only the dry Kalahari and Namib Deserts. Visiting southern...
Bird of the week – Week 50: African sacred ibis
One of the important gods in the pantheon of Ancient Egypt was Thoth, often depicted as having the head of a Sacred ibis (he is sometimes depicted as having the head of a baboon,...
Bird of the week – Week 49: Crowned lapwing
Lapwing. Now there is a rather strange word, but what does it mean? Well, don’t try researching this on the Internet unless you have quite a bit of time to spare, and are prepared...
Bird of the week – Week 48: Pied kingfisher
We were visiting a series of small pans near the Zambezi River to the east of Katima Mulilo in northern Namibia when we came upon a wooden moroko pulled up on the bank of...
Bird of the week – Week 47: Chestnut-vented tit-babbler
Walking through the veld anywhere in Namibia or in the semi-arid western parts of South Africa it is not unusual to be attracted to a melodious and bubbling song issuing from the depths of...
Bird of the Week – Week 46 : Southern carmine bee-eater
Carmine is the name of the red dye that was originally obtained from the cochineal beetle; described as the colour of tomatoes or rubies. Or blood. The name of a food dye used to...
Bird of the week – Week 45: Yellow-bellied greenbul
The Yellow-bellied greenbul is an attractive little bird that can sometimes become quite friendly and used to the presence of people; several times we have been visited by these birds while camping in northern...
Bird of the week – Week 43: Bokmakierie
The call of the Bokmakierie is a delight to hear. The paired birds almost invariably call in duet and have quite an extensive repertoire, but often containing a bok, bok, bok followed by a...
Bird of the week – Week 42 : African mourning dove
Southern Africa is blessed with a great variety of doves and pigeons; around fourteen different species are resident here. Some are common and widespread throughout the region, others not. One of those that is...
Recent Comments