Migratory Birds On The Return
HAENERTSBURG- A Cape Robin Chat sits on my garden fence every morning and evening and sings his poor little lungs out. It’s a bit anthropomorphic, I know, but one just cannot help feeling for our little feathered friend, ridding my adjacent manicured green grove of tiresome insect pests and the like.
So I suppose it’s not too bad after all. With all his voracious, indeed vicious by intention, singing, it seems the seasons are changing and our avian compatriots are heralding the changes for us no less than the plants have started to.
It is an exciting time for local birding enthusiasts to start searching, and for some, ticking off, the first arrivals and special not-very-often-seen feathered visitors to South Africa.
During October and November many migratory birds are arriving in drips and drabs, as they are starting to now. An early visitor was Klaas’s Cuckoo, seen and heard a number of weeks ago along the Limpopo River and other places. The difficulty in correctly stating whether this bird was the first arrival is compounded by the fact that some individuals of some species, mostly some of the young of local breeding migrants, stay for the winter and various bird-sighting records prove this.
As the seasons move from one to the next, subtle clues like changing day-length, drought (in the case of waders) and ambient temperatures prod many birds into behaviour-changes that ready them for a journey to ‘greener pastures’, or, at least comparatively speaking, greener that the ones they find themselves in.
Some move only locally or sub-regionally due to local weather conditions or fire events to which they may be attracted or from which they may be repulsed for a short time. Whatever the many causal factors, birds come this time of year are moving all over the globe... some flying over 10,000km from their summer residencies to ‘overwinter’ here in Southern Africa!
Others move within Africa only and their annual migratory round-trip flights will total anything from 1,000 to 12,000km.
The Red-backed shrike is a lovely bird to look at and observe as it is relatively confiding to prying human eyes (looking mostly though various makes of binocular). This little diminutive bird travels great distances from Germany and Russia to spend time in lower latitudes, catching and sometimes hawking from mid-air breakfast and afternoon tea with great gusto and showmanship if one allows oneself the time to observe carefully.
European and Broad-billed Roller, Woodland Kingfisher, Yellowbilled Kite and Wahlberg’s Eagle, the Barn and Lesser-striped Swallow, Wood Sandpipers and Greenshank are all common species that we look forward to having with us here in the South every year.
Black Swifts from Zimbabwe and northwards will soon be skimming the Drakensberg cliff-faces and Black Cuckoo will relay their solemn calls from the forest edge and dense bush below the tall ramparts of the mountain tops...
By Steven Roskelly
Kruger2Canyons.com
So I suppose it’s not too bad after all. With all his voracious, indeed vicious by intention, singing, it seems the seasons are changing and our avian compatriots are heralding the changes for us no less than the plants have started to.
It is an exciting time for local birding enthusiasts to start searching, and for some, ticking off, the first arrivals and special not-very-often-seen feathered visitors to South Africa.
During October and November many migratory birds are arriving in drips and drabs, as they are starting to now. An early visitor was Klaas’s Cuckoo, seen and heard a number of weeks ago along the Limpopo River and other places. The difficulty in correctly stating whether this bird was the first arrival is compounded by the fact that some individuals of some species, mostly some of the young of local breeding migrants, stay for the winter and various bird-sighting records prove this.
As the seasons move from one to the next, subtle clues like changing day-length, drought (in the case of waders) and ambient temperatures prod many birds into behaviour-changes that ready them for a journey to ‘greener pastures’, or, at least comparatively speaking, greener that the ones they find themselves in.
Some move only locally or sub-regionally due to local weather conditions or fire events to which they may be attracted or from which they may be repulsed for a short time. Whatever the many causal factors, birds come this time of year are moving all over the globe... some flying over 10,000km from their summer residencies to ‘overwinter’ here in Southern Africa!
Others move within Africa only and their annual migratory round-trip flights will total anything from 1,000 to 12,000km.
The Red-backed shrike is a lovely bird to look at and observe as it is relatively confiding to prying human eyes (looking mostly though various makes of binocular). This little diminutive bird travels great distances from Germany and Russia to spend time in lower latitudes, catching and sometimes hawking from mid-air breakfast and afternoon tea with great gusto and showmanship if one allows oneself the time to observe carefully.
European and Broad-billed Roller, Woodland Kingfisher, Yellowbilled Kite and Wahlberg’s Eagle, the Barn and Lesser-striped Swallow, Wood Sandpipers and Greenshank are all common species that we look forward to having with us here in the South every year.
Black Swifts from Zimbabwe and northwards will soon be skimming the Drakensberg cliff-faces and Black Cuckoo will relay their solemn calls from the forest edge and dense bush below the tall ramparts of the mountain tops...
By Steven Roskelly
Kruger2Canyons.com
Labels: birds, haenertsburg, hoedspruit, migration
posted by Kruger2Canyons.com at
Friday, October 06, 2006
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