I was giving a guided tour of the Western Cape to some birding clients from Malta during mid-August. One of our highlights of the tour was an unexpected clash between predator and prey - but perhaps not what one would expect! Tourists to South Africa typically want to see Lions and Cheetahs attempting to reel in a fleet-footed Springbok, but in some ways this encounter was just as thrilling. We were driving through the Strandfontein Sewage Works. Yes, you read that right. The poop farm. Sewage works are notorious for their copious birdlife, especially water birds who enjoy the nutrient-rich environment in the settling pans. Anyway... We noticed two White-necked Ravens Corvus albicollis flying very low over the dirt road separating two adjacent pans. They seemed to be concentrating on one spot, rather than flying over, so we stopped the car to see what was up. The birds landed on the road, bringing our attention to a Cape River Crab Potamonautes perlatus that was attempting to cross the road, exposing itself to the opportunistic corvids. The Crab immediately assumed a defensive posture, with both pincers raised and pointed at the Raven. One bird decided this morsel wasn't worth the effort and vacated the scene. The other, however, was not put off by this aggressive display, and proceeded to attack the courageous crustacean. The Raven grabbed the Crab by its pincers and legs, probably attempting to rip one of its limbs off to make it an easier kill. The Crab was flung four or five times up into the air, but each time made a valiant effort to snap at the Raven's face and beak. The Raven's nictating membrane flickered across its eye to protect it from the Crab's blows. This battle continued in this fashion for a few minutes with the Crab not capitulating. The second Raven then also decided that the prize was not worth the battle, and it too left the Crab to cross the road in peace. Everybody loves an underdog, and we were no exception as we cheered for the Crab's victory. We sidled up next to the victor to congratulate him and snap his photograph. The Crab posed proudly with both pincers raised as if he had won a heavyweight title. We hadn't realized it during the fight, but the Raven did manage to take one of the Crab's eyes in the fight. Despite this the Crab bravely fought on. The Raven was fighting only for its lunch, and the Crab for its life, and the imbalance of motivation probably dictated the outcome of the fight.
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My family enjoys taking vacations to outdoor destinations. Our holiday cottage in Pearly Beach gets visited frequently for weekends or festive holiday breaks. We also have access to a plot of land in the Kouebokkeveld called Onderboschkloof, which if you ask any member of our family must be a contender for the best place on earth. However, every couple of years we try to get away to a nature reserve or national park. In the past we have done Kruger National Park a handful of times, Etosha in Namibia, and the Kalahari. This year in June we decided on something a little closer to home than those far-flung destinations, although that's all relative considering it was still a 2000 km round trip, without even counting the kilometers done inside the parks on game drives!
“There! At the edge of the floodlight!” The spotter fought against the stiffness imposed by three layers of down and pointed excitedly to the edge of the ice. Ten people similarly hidden behind their beanies and scarves clambered for their binoculars, and hung themselves precariously off the edge of the ship in the hope of a view. As this was happening, a single ghostly, ethereal form danced in from the darkness on the lightest of wings. Its snow-white feathers glinted with a faint gold in the ship’s lights as it dipped and swayed above the piercing blue ice sheets. After the briefest moment it dissipated back into the darkness once more, leaving the observers in a moment of magical silence, before eruptions of joy and high-fives. They were all aware that they had witnessed something very, very special – the mystical Snow Petrel of the Antarctic. I was recently selected as a member of a team of bird observers to join a 2 week scientific research voyage on the SA Agulhas II to the Antarctic. We would be doing surveys of seabirds all along the ship’s route. The data we were to collect was for the Atlas of Seabirds At Sea (AS@S) project being led by Birdlife South Africa. While not being able to reach the mainland during winter, we aimed to enter the Marginal Ice Zone, characterized by circular ice sheets younger than a year old known as ‘pancake ice’. The vast majority of our trip was to be spent traversing the vast southern Ocean. We would not see land for the entirety of our trip – certainly a novel situation for most of us, but the prospects of birds we would otherwise only ever dream of seeing most certainly outweighed any nerves about our sea legs. The other members of the bird team were Dominic Rollinson, Patrick Cardwell, and Justin Nicolau, all of whom are established names in South African birding, having all significantly exceeded that magical 800-bird mark on their southern African lifelists. I was of course fairly intimidated, having only amassed a relatively meagre 570-odd birds on my list. However, I had plenty pelagic birding experience on my side as a guide for Cape Town Pelagics. I’ve been regularly leading trips off Cape Point to see albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters and the like for around a year, so I felt fairly confident that my seabirding would be up to par. Only Dom had been to sea more than I had in the last year, so in that respect I was well qualified. Of course, there was no competition or second-guessing among the team once on the boat, and as one finds with most birders everyone was very friendly and helpful to one another, and were excited to get another member of the team onto a new bird, even if they themselves had seen it already. |
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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