Bird of the week – Week 61 : Speckled mousebird
Mousebirds are quite common in most parts of southern Africa, and the most common type in the eastern part of the region is the Speckled mousebird. Its range is limited to the wetter eastern...
Category: Birding
Bird of the week – Week 60: Grey-backed camaroptera
The Grey-backed camaroptera was previously known as the Grey-backed bleating warbler, a descriptive name for the bleating alarm call of this little bird, which is not unlike the bleating of a lamb. Very vocal,...
Bird of the week – Week 59: Greater kestrel
The Greater kestrel is, as one would expect from its name, the largest of the kestrels found in the southern African region, being some 37 cm in length. The sexes are alike in plumage,...
Bird of the week – Week 58: Ashy tit
The Ashy tit is a small bird, the adults just 15 cm in length, and is not very common within its chosen range. To come across one as it hops through the dense foliage...
Bird of the week – Week 57: Grey heron
Large grey herons are a common sight at many dams, rivers estuaries, lagoons and other bodies of water within southern Africa. Unmistakable with their long necks, long legs and dagger-like beaks, the Grey heron...
Bird of the week – Week 56: Common whimbrel
The Common whimbrel is one of the many migrants who wing their way over vast distances to visit the shores of the southern African region during the summer. They arrive from the northern hemisphere...
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...
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...
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...
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