Back to South African Trip Reports

The final day in the Bonamanzi area turned out to be a bit of a nightmare in the end with gale force winds and torrential rain in the St Lucia to Cape Vidal area, which is where we decided to go today. Below is a taster of the conditions we endured. The first is on the approach road to Cape Vidal & the second & third of the Indian Ocean at Cape Vidal. Definitely not the weather for birdwatching. Consequently nothing else was photographed whilst we were there.

The decision was to do the boat trip at St Lucia. On the way we came across a bridge that had quite a few Little Swifts flying around it.

Just before reaching the boat we took a fortuitous wrong turn which resulted in the only sighting of the trip of a Brown Scrub-Robin

The boat wasn't going for another 90 minutes so we were advised to go to the start of the Estuary. It had filled up at the beach end and was not connected to the sea. Most of the birds were distant but we did photograph a few.

Goliath Heron

Pink-backed Pelican

Some of the birds seen from the boat were as follows.

Caspian Tern & Trumpeter Hornbill

Yellow Billed Stork (the first creating a shadow to catch fish)

African Spoonbill & Great White Egret

Giant Kingfisher

As I said earlier, after this the conditions changed dramatically and the weather really closed in with gale force winds and torrential rain. The only bird we even tried to photograph was a Black-bellied Korhaan and in these conditions, with the bird one hundred yards away, the resulting image was not good.

We gave it up as a bad job and retired back to Bonamanzi.

Nov 20th.

The weather wasn't too brilliant when we left Bonamanzi for Wakkerstroom and the only photos taken were of Green Spotted Wood Dove & Olive Thrush.

No other birds were photographed that day.

Nov 21st.

This was a brilliant day with over 100 species seen. No that many photos as most birds were distant but still enough to wet your appetite.

Grey-winged Francolin & Ant-eating Chat

Malachite Kingfisher & Crowned Plover

Grassveld Pipit & Black-shouldered Kite

male & female Sentinel Rock Thrush

Banded Martin

Orange-throated Longclaw

Southern Bald Ibis & Hamerkop

Red-billed Teal

That was it for the day. Unfortunately whilst a good number of species were seen most of them were at a distance too far for my equipment to photograph.