Birders are a crazy bunch. We will do crazy things to see a special bird. We love going to strange places (think rubbish dumps and sewerage plants). We are easily distracted. I think every birder has jumped up without warning mid-conversation to see what that odd-looking flash was flying into the hedge, leaving a non-birder bewildered and socially stranded. Birders can also be obsessed with numbers. Lifelists, world lists, country lists, yearlists, province lists, reserve lists, garden lists. Not to say that birders don’t enjoy the birds for enjoyment’s sake too, but numbers of species on one’s list is often used as a benchmark for assessing another birder’s ability (often wrongly!). Records are important in the birding community. The record of the most bird species recorded in a year was broken in 2015 (Noah Strycker saw 6042 species!), and is already being challenged this year. The record for the most species seen in a year within the American Birding Association area has been broken by two people this year already. I guess this addiction with “collecting” species is akin to what drives hunters and collectors of rare specimens, although ours is a much more benign, environmentally-friendly hobby. It was thus no surprise that when Garth Shaw messaged a group of Western Cape birders enquiring who wanted to make an attempt at 200+ species in a day around Cape Town there were some excited replies. Getting people’s schedules to agree did cause some difficulty, but eventually four birders found a date that would suit them all, and the team of Garth Shaw, Frans-Hendrik Joubert, Dominic Rollinson, and Andrew de Blocq was formed! We settled on the 8th of October, and began our route planning. We planned on doing a ‘proper’ Big Day. This means high-speed, intense birding. You jog between the car and the birding spots. You get your target species at each spot and move on to the next. No tea and cookie breaks for us! The rules were simple. Record as many birds as we could (seeing/hearing), with a majority of team members (i.e. 3 of the 4) needing to confirm the sighting for it to go on the list. The annual Birding Big Day run by Birdlife South Africa has a restriction of an area with a radius of 50 km around a set point. We didn’t need to restrict ourselves, and planned to maximize our potential species list by traveling to some very different areas. The national Birding Big Day record in the Western Cape stands at 216, set by Peter Ryan, Phil Hockey, John Graham, and Phil Dresser in the 1980s. That team includes some of the best-known names in South African birding, and indeed avian academia as it includes two directors of the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology! We had not-so-secret ambitions of challenging this monumental total and setting our own record for the most birds recorded in the Western Cape within 24 hours! We also had the idea to use this event to raise some funds for avian conservation. We unanimously decided on supporting Birdlife South Africa. We had all experienced firsthand the good work that they do around the country to protect and promote the birds that bring so much joy to us birders. We approached family and friends with the idea of sponsoring us per species we found. We had a phenomenal response, with a prize of a 2 night stay for 2 in Simonstown worth R2800 even being offered as a donation, so our sponsorships became a raffle! Having sponsorships for each species gave us immense motivation to go out and maximize our list! Garth, Dom and I had our final route fine-tuning on Friday evening at Garth’s house in Fishoek. Frans couldn’t join as he had a gig with his band in Stellenbosch, and they were only going on close to midnight! Excitement and nerves had settled in, and we were feeling more and more awake as the night went on! We eventually bedded down at around 9.30 pm, getting 2 hours of sleep before getting up again to pack the car and have a quick coffee. The things birders do… Shortly after midnight we got our first bird, only a couple hundred meters from Garth’s house. Spotted Thick-Knee, tick! We then headed to the Wildevoelvlei Wastewater Works for one of our nocturnal targets, the Black-crowned Night Heron. He popped our heads around the first reeds and immediately snagged him too. Another bird sat on a pole rather obligingly just around the next corner. We picked up some waterbirds too, but nothing else we weren’t going to get elsewhere on the day. We then went down to Boulders Beach for a quick visit to the African Penguins. A pair welcomed us at the gate, so we could move quickly on! From there we drove round close to Cape Point Nature Reserve to try for Striped Flufftail. Frans also caught us up there after his gig. How he got through the day I will never know. The man had not slept in around 40 hours by the time he got home on Saturday night… But he showed real commitment to the cause, even joking that he’d played badly to avoid an encore and extra time out of his Big Day. We didn’t get the Flufftail unfortunately, so we drove through to Tokai to get some more nocturnal targets. Here we were trying for Western Barn Owl and Burchell’s Coucal. The Owl screeched and the Coucal gave its cascading bubbly call for us, and a bonus here was the whooping call of Fiery-necked Nightjar! Out into Constantia we headed, this time for African Wood Owl and Buff-spotted Flufftail. The Wood Owl was fairly obliging, and we think at one stage there were 3 individuals calling away! The Flufftail was proving difficult, so we moved on again. We still needed the Spotted Eagle Owl, so we drove to Kirstenbosch to see if we could find the resident pair at the bottom gate. The entrance was barricaded, however, and no amount of talk could convince the night guard to let us walk there, even with his accompaniment. A little disappointed, we went to refuel the car, and then tried a few spots for House Crow. This was a complete ‘Hail Mary’ so to speak, as the Crows are obviously diurnal, but we could not hope to pick it up again on our route. Luck was not with us on this one, so we got ourselves in position for the dawn chorus. We got to Die Hel in Constantia around 5.30 am. The dawn chorus is one of the more special times of any Big Day. You’ve been cruising around for hours already chasing down single targets, and your list is very low for the amount of time and effort you’ve already committed. But as the birds begin to wake up and sing, you get a clear feeling that the Big Day is really kicking off, and the excitement really starts to build as your species list starts to accelerate. First to call were the Olive Thrushes, followed by the Cape White-eyes. The odd Cape Robin-Chat and Cape Batis then joined in the chirpy symphony. We had chosen a spot with plenty open sky to watch for raptors, and this paid off with an African Goshawk flying over us, calling. A hoot from a nearby Spotted Eagle Owl gave us immense relief that we wouldn’t miss this “easy” tick! Once we had cleaned up most of what we expected at Die Hel we headed to Little Stream to find the tricky Amethyst Sunbird. After a tense 5 minutes wait we eventually picked it up in the same tree that we had first found it a few days earlier! From there we headed to a known spot for Olive Woodpecker. Instead of the Woodpecker, we found a pair of Black Sparrowhawks on a nest! One pale morph and a black morph in the pair. After a quick stop at Cecilia Forest for Cape Siskin, we carried on to Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens for our last forest birds. I can’t say that I’d ever done birding on the run before, but there we were, sprinting through the gardens looking for our target species, much to the amusement of the morning strollers! We checked in with the Lemon Doves in the Enchanted Forest, and then stopped on the Canopy Walkway to catch our breath. Here we found the resident Olive Woodpecker (which I didn’t believe existed before this, as I’d been here so many times before!). We had beautiful views as he went about his business in the Coral Tree. On the run back to the car we also picked up Cape Sugarbird and Orange-breasted Sunbird in the Protea Garden, and a single dark morph Black Sparrowhawk flew out from the trees near Rycroft Gate. We then zooted out along the M5 to the spot along the Liesbeeck River where Dom found the Snowy Egret last year. We had a number of important ticks here, including Purple Heron, Malachite Kingfisher, Pied Kingfisher, and two Little Bitterns! We carried along the M5 before joining the R27 coastal road, stopping next at Dolphin Pans. Here we got our White-backed Duck and Grey-headed Gull, and we popped over the dunes for a quick sea watch. We had potential White-chinned Petrel and an unidentified Giant Petrel, but with the windy conditions and only 2 scopes it was too difficult to get 3 of us for certain onto the same bird, so we abandoned it. Our next stop was at Darling Hills. As we climbed out the car we spotted a male Southern Black Korhaan only 20 m away from us. We heard the Cape Clapper Larks whistling, Bokmakieries duetting, and a little further up we had Grey-winged Francolins calling – a tricky bird to get! Into the agricultural fields we had Crowned Lapwing, Capped Wheatear, Red-capped Lark, and African Pipit. Pied Starlings were also prevalent here. At the next bend we heard the Common Quail, and picked up European Bee-eater and African Hoopoe. Further down at the reedbeds we got out to try for African Rail. We were unsuccessful with the Rail, but did find Red-chested Flufftail calling, and Southern Masked Weaver which Dom was very worried about dropping on the day. We finished up the Darling Hills Road, headed through Darling and down to Tienie Versfeld where we were quickly onto the Cloud Cisticola, Large-billed Lark, and Common Quails. The roads between Darling and the R27 were riddled with roadworks, which cost us some valuable time which we had to make up. We stopped in quickly at Yzerfontein, picking up Bank, Cape, Crowned and White-breasted Cormorants, Swift, Sandwich and Common Terns, and African Black Oystercatcher. We then cruised on to West Coast National Park. Searching around the Geelbek Manor we picked up Southern Grey-headed Sparrow, Cardinal Woodpecker, and Cape Longclaw. Geelbek Hide was next, and as always the Langebaan Lagoon did not disappoint. The highlights at the hide were Eurasian Curlew, Lesser Flamingo, Marsh Sandpiper, Caspian Tern, and South African Shelduck. After a significant boost to our list we drove up the road to Seeberg Hide. The tide was not great as it was now quite far out, but the stop still held great value for us as we picked up White-fronted Plover, Cape Penduline Tit, Chestnut-vented Tit Babbler, and Bar-tailed Godwit. We then had a choice to make. Our next target area was quite far away in Riebeeck Kasteel, and we could either head south back through the park at 50 kph and then back along the Darling road that we knew was slow, or up through Langebaan that we knew had extensive roadworks that would also slow us down. We decided on the latter option, and it was probably not the better choice. The Langebaan diversions aside, the other road was just as littered with stop and goes, and our time budget went out the window. We tried to make up time by not stopping in the farmlands for our limited targets, but we still fell behind schedule, and we never really managed to make this time up. We did pick up Grey-backed Sparrow Lark from the car, and Streaky-headed Seed Eater while stopped near Riebeeck Kasteel to look in vain for Horus Swift, but it was a long time in the car with very limited reward. Our next scheduled stop was at Paarl Bird Sanctuary. We arrived at 2:55 pm, only to be told that they close the site at 3 pm. We pleaded with the security to give us half an hour and they eventually relented. Thank goodness they did, as our list took a nice boost with Black Crake, African Reed Warbler, African Swamphen, White-faced Duck, Southern Pochard, Common Sandpiper, African Spoonbill, and a pair of the diminutive and beautiful Hottentot Teal. Our plan after Paarl was to head east through the pass and up via Ceres to the Tankwa Karoo. We had a few individual targets along the way that we hoped to nip in the bud through the Slanghoek Valley. Our first was the vagrant Knob-billed Duck. This bird had nearly caused us to change our route, as Frans and I had both unsuccessfully tried to find it in the preceding week. But the day before the Big Day it was reported again, so we took the gamble and tried again. This eventually paid off when after being frustrated at two farm dams we found the Duck on a smaller, less conspicuous third dam above the other two. This was a new bird in the province for all of us, so we were all delighted to get it after some stressful time spent searching for it. After the Duck we made tracks for Bainskloof Pass. In the last few days before I had read online about birding in the area, as I’d never been here before. I came across an article that mentioned Cinnamon-breasted Buntings at the foot of Bainskloof Pass. This species is a really tricky find in close proximity to Cape Town, so I was surprised that nobody knew about them. On my reconnaissance mission on the Thursday before I pulled up to the first rocks of the pass, played the call, and out they flew – easy! However, on the day we pulled up to the same spot, same procedure, and…..nothing. I had seen birds a little further into the pass too, so we drove a little further in, and were just about to give up as a bird finally showed itself and perched on top of a rock. We so nearly didn’t get it! From Bainskloof Pass we headed north to Michell’s Pass, stopping at a picnic stop to pick up Cape Rock Thrush, and then through Ceres towards the Tankwa. We were really relying on the Tankwa to give us the last 20 or so species that we needed to crest 200. However, with the lost time earlier in the day and the windy, cold conditions, we really struggled. In Karoopoort we picked up Mountain Wheatear, Namaqua Warbler, Pririt Batis, and, most surprisingly, Black-headed Canary. The picnic stop produced the resident Layard’s Tit Babbler but not the Cinnamon-breasted Warbler. Once in the Tankwa proper the conditions deteriorated to a point where we were damned if left the windows open as we were freezing, and damned if we closed them as the birds had all hunkered down and the only chance we had of finding anything was by sound! Unsurprisingly we didn’t pick up much else, with Karoo Chat being about the only bird brave enough to withstand the elements. By the time we reached Eierkoppie the sun was down and the Karoo was, as the locals say, tjoepstil. We were around 40 kilometers short of where we had planned to be, and at the end that really hurt us. We ended up on 191 species, just a few short of our ambitious target, but well short of the overall record.
On a Big Day it is always interesting to see what you’ve missed. Almost inevitably some ridiculously common species manages to evade you on the day, and we were no exception. For us our nemeses were the Mousebirds and Cuckoos. We had only one of the three possible Mousebird species on our list, White-backed, missing both Red-faced and Speckled, which most of us would have had in our gardens at home. We also did not even hear a single Cuckoo, never mind glimpse one. We also dropped odd targets here and there, but the most obvious were the lack of some very common migrants. If we redid our route in a month’s time we would no doubt have added Barn Swallow, Common Buzzard, a Cuckoo or two, and probably a few more waders. We dissected our day all the way back from Tankwa to Cape Town, and are pretty sure that if we were to do it again we would spend less time driving, and more time doing focused birding. We ended up driving over 900 kilometers in the day, which is quite ridiculous when you think about it. We maximized our potential list of species with the extra traveling, but actually missed quite a few that if we’d stayed in a smaller area and birded longer we would have got. We also had limited planning time, very little in-depth knowledge of where to find specific birds along our route, and the weather no doubt counted against us too as it was very windy almost everywhere we went. These are not excuses, however, and the day was no failure as we had an awesome time birding together across all sorts of interesting places and habitats, we saw some breathtaking birds, and of course we raised a substantial amount for a cause we all hold very close to our hearts! We would like to thank all of those that supported us morally or financially with donations, and also the support team for the Birdlasser app who set up a live tracker for our event on their website at absolutely no cost.
1 Comment
25/10/2016 11:46:31
A brilliant and inspirational read with some extraordinary birds and amazing places! I've never heard barn owls in Tokai and I live there! I hope I can be part of a similiar BBD trip this year! Here's hoping!
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AuthorI am a birder, biologist, and nature blogger. I post about my trips, informative tidbits, and things I think are interesting. Archives
July 2017
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