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Birding the Ndumo area, South Africa

10,000 Birds

Ndumo Game Reserve lies in the Easternmost part of South Africa, close to the border of Mozambique and Eswatini. It is not particularly big but has a reported 430 bird species including migrants, though during my short stay it seems I missed most of the key attractions among them. Pel’s Fishing Owl, where were you?

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Birding the Eshowe area, South Africa

10,000 Birds

The White-eared Barbet is another bird species with an annoyingly sensible Latin species name, leucotis (white-eared). Obviously, my job as a blog post writer would be a lot easier if there was a racist slave-trader named Ernesto Leucotis who somehow got a bird species named after him. But the same species was never found again.

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Yellow-billed Kites in South Africa

10,000 Birds

For a long time it was treated as a subspecies of the ubiquitous Black Kite, a species of scavenging bird of prey much hated by my grandfather (they used to steal food from troops during the war, if memory serves). A valuable lesson in looking twice at the ubiquitous species. Birds kites South Africa'

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Flock to Marion

10,000 Birds

Birdlife South Africa has previously done two of these types of trips before, previously called Flock to Sea – Namibia in 2013 and Flock to Nowhere in 2017, in partnership with MSC Cruises. It is still volcanically active with researchers periodically discovering new flows.

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Wakkerstroom, South Africa: It’s a Lark

10,000 Birds

So instead let’s talk about South Africa’s best kept birding secret (at least outside of the country) Wakkerstroom. I have 10,000 Birds contributor Adam Riley to thank for telling me I had to add it to my list, and a quick bit of research showed that he was right on. It was also weirdly good for quail, of sorts.

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Not enough Woodpeckers

10,000 Birds

Or would be, had I encountered more of them – so far, I have seen only a very small share of the approximately 233 woodpecker species, and got decent photos of an even smaller number – not much more than 10% of all of them. Also, the cap of the females is not even red but black.

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Bird Talk: An Exploration of Avian Communication–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

There was a time when I thought each bird species had its own individual song. Then I found out that there was this vocalization called a ‘call,’ so I thought each bird species had its own individual song (but just the males) and individual call. I do wish there was more about research on female bird song.