Sunbird Feast!!

While birding this morning I thought the title of this message should be "patience, patience...". I atlased the Seringveld and birding was really slow. It was cold, windy and unpleasant. The birds must also have thought so as for long periods they were nowhere to be seen. During the first hour I had 29 species. However during the second hour I could only add THREE. I tried all sort of roads I have not travelled before, but nothing...I was ready to go home and call it a day but decided to continue. The third hour was a lot better and I eventually managed to see 51 species. Not a great total at all, but better than I thought it would be.


The highlight of the morning was not a rarity but a whole bunch of sunbirds!! Next to the road was a large patch of Wild Dagga (also called Lion's Ear) Leonotis leonurus. They are in full bloom at the moment and can be seen all around Pretoria (by the way if you are looking for information about plants in South Africa, I found the following website of SANBI of great value: http://www.plantzafrica.com/). This patch had about 25+ sunbirds feeding in it. The majority were White-bellied Sunbirds with a few Amethyst and one Marico male. They were calling insistently and sometimes competing for the same flower. Really something special to see. Now would you think that with all that sunbirds around it is easy to get some great photographs - alas not...