Wednesday 3 September 2008

Cape Town birds



We visited Cape Town 29th July to 14th August. It was a family visit but I managed to get a fair bit of birding done. It was my first taste of Southern African birding and I was very impressed. The Cape Town area is very accessible, full of wildlife and great fun!

There are several good birdguides available for Southern Africa but I plumped for the SASOL Birds of Southern Africa (Sinclair, Hockey, Tarboton. Struik Publishers). I browsed a couple of the others in bookshops and they have their virtues but I'm happy with the SASOL.

I'll add more birds and some annotation as soon as I can.


Note: birds are listed alphabetically


African dusky flycatcher



Black oystercatcher



African pelican



African white ibis



Black-headed heron



Black-necked grebe



Blacksmith plover



Black-winged stilt



Bokmakierie (a pity I couldn't get closer to this wonderful bird)



Bully canary



Cape batis





Cape bunting



Cape canary



Cape francolin



Cape robin-chat



Cape shoveller



Cape sparrow



Cape teal



Cape wagtail





Cape weaver



Cape white eye


Cattle egret



Common fiscal





Common waxbill



Glossy ibis



Great flamingo



Hadeda ibis



hartlaub's gulls



Karoo prinia







Karoo scrub-robin



Kelp gull



Layard's tit-babbler



Lesser swamp-warbler



Levaillant's cisticola



Little grebe



Little rush-warbler



Malachite sunbird



Mountain wheatear



Olive thrush



Orange-breasted sunbird



Pied kingfisher



Purple gallinule (African purple swamphen)



Purple heron (wary)



Red-billed teal



Red-knobbed coot



Red-winged starlings



Southern boubou



Southern double-collared sunbird





Southern masked weaver



Southern pochard (female)



Southern red bishop



Spotted eagle owl



Spotted thick-knee



Three-banded plover



White-backed duck



White-breasted cormorant



Yellow-billed duck



Yellow canary

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