Water - the source of life!

We recenlty bought a small water fountain with a pump and what a pleasure it has been to watch the birds bathing and drinking from this new water source.

The fountain has different levels and as we hoped, different species uses different levels - the white-eyes enjoy the top level where the water runs through small holes and cracks while the thrushes and doves enjoy the deeper middle level where they can bath and drink as they whish. The deep bottom level that contains the pump is not that popular - although the dogs love to drink water from it!!!!


But as in all things in life some birds want it all for themselves - the thrushes have now decided this is their oasis and chase away every other bird that want to come and have a drink. So the bulbulls, sparrows and weavers have to wait patiently for their chance to drink. However a Karoo Thrush is no match for a Red-eyed Dove - they just fly in and everything else have to move away. Real bullies.

I think we are going to have tons of fun watching "our" birds using this new toy. Mmmm...maybe another opportunity for a new species list.......

Home Pentad Atlassing

I did my home pentad yesterday and got over 50 species in the first two hours. In contrast to previous atlasing surveys in this area, I took a different route and also visited some patches that I did not even know existed in this pentad. So although not uncommon species for the Pretoria area some interesting species were logged.

The African Green Pigeons moved up the order of my list rather dramatically as they can be seen early in the morning feeding in the fig tree in our garden. In winter they are nowhere to be seen.



I ticked Black-crowned Tchagra, Black-throated canaries and Black-chested Prinia at the Magaliesberg and a flock of European Bee-eaters - so they are still around. It seems to me as if Blacksmith Lapwings are getting more common in our area for they are now regularly ticked which was not so a year ago. In a patch of bushveld in the Derdepoort area I got Brown-crowned Tchagra, Purple Indigobird and its host Jameson's Firefinch.

The number of swallows is down and I recorded one Lesser Sstriped Swallow and one Greater Striped Swallow. No Barn Swallows. In the moist area next to the stream Thick-billed Weaver and Brown-hooded Kingfisher were seen.

Back at home "my" African Hoopoes and Green Wood-hoopoes could be added to the list.

Thank you also to Philip Calinikos who once a week submits his list for my home pentad - he always provides me with a few species to add to my list!!!