Bird Ringing at NARREC
Last month we accompanied members of the Namibia Bird Club on a visit to NARREC (Namibia Animal Rehabilitation Research & Education Centre) close to Windhoek. This wonderful sanctuary, nestled in dense thornveld, cares for...
Bird of the Week – Week 113 – South African shelduck
The South African shelduck is a quite a large, goose-like member of the duck family, with a length of approximately 64 cm. The males are slightly bigger than the females and the sexes differ...
Courtship Routine of Hormone-driven Pin-tailed whydahs
We have found that many of the campsites in Namibia turn up something quite unexpected during a visit, and a weekend we spent at the game farm Melrose, just 30 km to the west...
Bird of the Week – Week 112 – Pin-tailed whydah
The Pin-tailed whydah is resident throughout most of Africa south of the Sahara and is quite widespread in southern Africa, absent only from most of Botswana and from the coastal desert of Namibia. Its...
Black-backed jackals
A small mammal that we come across often on our travels is the Black-backed jackal (Canis mesomelas). This fox-like animal is fairly common in most habitats, but especially in the game reserves in southern...
Bird of the Week – Week 111 – Orange River white-eye
The common Afrikaans name for the Orange River white-eye is the “Gariep glasogie”, which translates as the “Gariep glass-eye”. (The Gariep was the original Nama name for the Orange River, a name which is...
The Water Monitor
Last week I wrote about the Rock Monitor and today I will chat about the Water monitor (Varanus niloticus) that is found in southern Africa. They’re apparently called monitors because they are good at...
The Bird of the Week – Week 110 – Cape crow
The Cape crow is widespread and fairly common throughout the southern African region; the only all black crow that is native to the region. The sexes of these crows are alike in both size...
The Rock Monitor
2012 – The ‘year of the dragon’ according to Chinese astrology. The closest thing that southern Africa has to the dragon is the Rock monitor – a distant relative of the ferocious-looking Komodo Dragon...
Bird of the Week – Week 109 – Southern pale chanting goshawk
A very common sight along the quieter roads of Namibia, Botswana and more arid western parts of South Africa, is a slender, mostly grey raptor with a very upright stance perched on a telephone...
The Turtles and the Teal
I was walking slowly along the edge of the large dam at Namibgrens, trying to get close enough to take a photograph of a pair of Dusky sunbirds that were feeding nearby, when a...
Bird of the Week – Week 108 – Greater flamingo
As its name would suggest, the Greater flamingo is the largest of the flamingoes, with a length of around 150 cm. They are very distinctive birds and are unlikely to be confused with any...
The Devil’s Darning Needle
What on earth inspired the title of today’s blog you may wonder. As always our research has lead us to some interesting information and in case you haven’t already guessed from the photo below,...
Bird of the Week – Week 107 – Arrow-marked babbler
Arrow-marked babblers, like the other babblers in the region, are usually heard before they are seen. Noisy birds, they have a harsh chatter, a bubbling “na, na, na…” often uttered by many birds at...
The Breakfast Club
Over the years we’ve belonged to a number of interesting clubs that have contributed greatly to our interests and hobbies. Hiking clubs, birding and sports clubs and the like, but I think that the...
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