Reports & Photos of Past Field Trips
Birding Heaven in South Africa – March 1-13, 2006
by Debra Mallory
What would inspire a group of people to board a plane at 1:20 a.m. and then spend the next 24-hours traveling by air? For those of us who were on that flight, it was the prospect of visiting a part of the 
world that most of us had previously only dreamed of. Our group left Denver to travel to Johannesburg, South Africa, and though the flight was long, what awaited us once we reached South Africa more than made up for the jet lag we were plagued with. We spent a few days in the Jo’burg area visiting some of the local attractions and were able to identify several of the more common birds in the area, including the red bishop and hadedah ibis, with a highlight being the breeding pair of Verreaux’s eagles at one of the botanic gardens. We also enjoyed a visit to a cheetah reserve and were rewarded with close up views of those beautiful animals.
The “official Audubon trip” started with a lovely couple of days in the Dullstroom area, which enjoys a high elevation. Our intrepid guides, Bruce and Leon, managed to take care of us, entertain us, be patient with us, and educate us as to all the new species we were encountering, which included buff-streaked chat, long-crested eagle, secretary bird, steppe buzzard, long-tailed widowbirds, and malachite sunbird. Mammals included blesbok, springbok, and reedbuck, as well as yellow mongoose.
We moved on to Blyde River Canyon, encountered gale-force winds and rain, but managed to get in some birding en route to several beautiful waterfalls and a hoped-for look off the Drakensberg escarpment at “God’s Window,” a view which never materialized due to the bad weather.
Moving on to Kruger National Park brought us not only better weather, but views of a world most of us have only seen on the Discovery Channel. Not long after crossing the park boundaries, we were confronted with a mind-boggling assortment of new birds in addition to zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, warthog, baboons, elephants, and on a night drive, five lionesses. Birds included the wonderful bee-eaters and rollers which are indigenous to that area, in addition to the resident African scops owl which inhabited the Satara camp ground where we stayed in thatch-roof rondavels. Several of their starling and dove species greatly improved our attitudes about the beauty of these birds, and the woodland kingfisher, African wood hoopoe & crested barbet increased the WOW! factor.
From Kruger we drove on to Swaziland, a beautiful and fairly mountainous country smack in the middle of eastern South Africa. We spent an afternoon hiking around one of the nature preserves and, the next morning, visited a local market where we exercised our bargaining skills and pocket books. From there we returned to South Africa & stayed in Wakkerstroom, an important birding area in South Africa with many wetlands and special ecological niches. We were able to see ground woodpeckers, several species of lark, the beautiful but endangered crowned crane and blue crane, Denham’s bustard and blue korhaan, in addition to a colony of intermixed yellow mongoose and meerkats.
From Wakkerstrom it was on to Mkuzi Reserve, where we “bagged” several good birds, including African firefinch, red-fronted tinkerbird, purple-crested turaco, gray waxbill and tambourine dove. Our last stop was in Eshowe which also has several endemic species and where we were again plagued by some inclement weather. We did see the palm nut vulture and the spotted ground thrush, however.
Several people continued on optional post-trip extensions to Zambia and Victoria Falls, but for those of us returning to Denver, it was the end of a wonderful 2 weeks in South Africa with our life-lists greatly expanded – the official final count was 331 species - and some wonderful memories to carry us back home.
