A waning

Earlier this year I wondered if I stood a chance at getting to 100 posts. This was in August, it felt as if the year was already drawing to a close, and with just 40 posts at that point I could easily have come under the low count of last year. This bugs me. I hate it when I can't write but I know from experience that there is nothing I can do about it and so I dont fight it. I continued to dribble out the odd post until about October, which ended somewhere in the 50s. Then along came November, and with it a renewed enthusiasm for creativity. Creativity born out of procrastination it has to be said, with none of my trips from May onwards written up. Fully aware that they fall on largely deaf ears I got cracking, I am nothing if not stubborn. I've now finished up until the end of August and still have a couple to go from September and October. Will I see it through?

Well unfortunately I sense a waning. Can I really be bothered? On one of them I wasn't able to take my camera, so what should be a richly-illustrated few days has almost nothing. This was due to an air traffic control meltdown; I decided to play it safe and rather than return from Switzerland to London and risk getting stuck there, I changed my plans and went straight to Madrid. My pre-packed camera bag that I hadn't wanted in the Alps thus remained in London which was a real shame. The other major trip was not really a birding trip, but there are lots of photos of other things and may merit one of those single but image-heavy posts that I do from time to time.

The other thing holding me back, or starting to at least, is that this is my 99th post of 2023 and the 100th is already written. That nagging feeling of output inadequacy is ebbing away, and with it the feeling I should really get my arse in gear. I did that in November in December, that was the heavy lift, and now I am subconsciously gearing up for a rest.....

Christmas comes early

Back in October or November when I was frantically running up and down the garden in my [delayed] annual plant reshuffle I noticed that my Strelitzia reginae was growing something that did not look a leaf. I was in a big hurry so scooped it up with everything else that needed to come in and shoved it in the conservatory. Sure enough it was a flower stem, at this stage just a thin vertical spike. For those of that don't know your latin plant names the common name is Bird of Paradise. It's possible that even this means nothing to you, but when you see the photos you'll go "Ah, so that's what that is!".

I left it as close to the window as possible as South Africa is a high luminosity environment but nothing happened. Or if it did it was imperceptible. Gradually the conservatory got cooler and cooler, and whilst the spike had definitely increased in height I felt sure that it would never develop fully. After a series of failed negotiations about taking it up to the much warmer bedroom I took it up to the much warmer bedroom. 

Bingo! Heat was the missing piece and once provided growth restarted in a visible manner. I even had to water it. Since then it has been a race against time, specifically a race against December 25th. I wish I had taken a time lapse but what happened is that the top of the spike started to swell, becoming a bit wider than the thin stalk, and then last week that swelling started to lean to the left, or in my case south-west, as I assume it must be related to the light in some way. By Friday it was at around 45 degrees, and just this Saturday I remarked to Mrs L that I could see a faint line of orange on the top. On Sunday I even posted this crappy photo to Twitter, just because.

This morning I woke up as usual and started to potter around the bedroom. Gah!! At some point in the night this had happened. I've got an advent calendar but this is just so much better. I keep looking at it and smiling ear to ear. I've had these flower before, in fact my Strelitzia juncea (a rare thin-leaved variant of the same plant that I grew from seed) has even flowered before now, but somehow this one is more perfect. Perhaps it is the time of year, a splash of colour in a dreary season, perhaps it is a function of ageing, who can say? But it has made me very happy.

My early morning surprise

I remember exactly where and when I got this plant. It was in January 2018 on Madeira, a weekend escape for some much-needed warmth and specifically to seek out plants. I bought it as a tiny plug plant, only a few inches tall, from a stall at the Mercado dos Lavradores in central Funchal, near to where the cable car goes from. Along with various other goodies it came back to London with me and has been nurtured ever since. Perhaps nutured is too strong a word, it has been in a corner of the greenhouse year round, left to its own devices. It gets baked in the summer and I water it, and frozen in the winter when I ignore it. This year is the first time it has been in, it will go soft! Anyway, it has taken nearly six years, but it has delivered and just in time for Christmas.

I get the feeling that the flower stem is highly etiolated due to low light, but it is all about the bit on top!

Next year I'll repot it, they have huge roots and if I do not it will simply crack the pot which would be a big waste. I may yet have to break it to get it out but let's see. Anyway, the timing is very apt - I am full on South Africa at the moment having just written up the trip from July. It is a shame that my various Aloes chose to flower during our summer, as to have this plant set in amongst the Fan Aloes and have them all flower simultaneously would be sensational. 

Where has the water gone?

Another dismal Saturday morning attempting to see birds in Wanstead, probably made even worse by my marathon blogging of South Africa, full of incredible memories of colourful birds.  The Flats were dreadful, the Park a little better. I don't often go to the Park, but there was a decent range of Ducks on Heronry. Well below peak numbers in years gone by, but 12 Pochard were a big number these days. Going back a few years I have a high count of 60 in 2012, and plenty of counts in the 30's and 40's before that. Something must have happened around that time as after 2012 the highest counts are of 20 in January 2013 and 15 in September 2014. January 2015 then has a record of 12 birds, but that is the last double-figure count since yesterday. That is what I call a decline.

Gadwall exhibit a similar decline locally. Ten years ago I could regularly count 70, 80, 100+ birds in the Park. Yesterday there were 25. Part of the reason for the decline in Ducks might be a decline in water. The following photos show the current state of the Canal on the Ornamental Waters. It might need renaming....

The 'Canal'

The OW has (had...) two arms that stretch north and south from the the central feature, the rectangular Canal. Just to the south is the Grotto. Broadly the arms follow the course of the Roding, which was diverted a long time ago onto its current course. The northern part began to lose water, dry out and increase in vegetation some time ago, but the Canal and the southern section were still OK until relatively recently. Back in 2015 there were 34 Wigeon on the Canal, a local record number. I had actually thought that this was more recently than eight years ago, so maybe the deterioration has in fact been slower, but nonetheless look at it today. Wigeon? Hah! 

The whole of the Ornamental Water now looks like this, overgrown, and with a few residual pools here and there. Talk about being left to rot by the land owner. Not saying that this is an easy job, but still, year after year of doing nothing (the pump at the northern end has been out of service for what, five years, a decade?) and this is the result. It's likely to be an expensive fix, but perhaps more expensive now rather than if it had been dealt with it when it started becoming a problem. We've all been there I suppose. I just checked the latest accounts of the Corporation of London - it seems expenditure outstrips cash income, but nonetheless this is not an organisation that in seems in any great financial peril - balance sheet assets are £1.3bn, and they increased by 10% in the 2021-22 tax year. The Director of Open Spaces earns £116k year. I reckon whoever that is should come and have a look at it!

Kruger National Park, South Africa - July 2023 - Trip List - Animals

My primary focus might have been birds, but the main draw of the Kruger is the abundance of animals. We were not disappointed, it was incredible, and the views were mostly breathtaking. It was ridiculous how quickly we went from being blown away with an Elephant to essentially ignoring them. Lions and Leopards are top billing, and I thought we would see lots of the former and, if we were lucky, one of the latter. In the event we saw six Leopard and 11 Lion, really not the numbers of either that I had been expecting. We did not see a single hunt take place, nor did we see a single fresh carcass - all that must happen all of the time, but you would need to be lucky to see it.

Hyenas were seen quite frequently, including on at least one of the night drives. These boosted our mammal lists considerably, and were responsible for both Jackals, all the Civets and Genets, a White-tailed Mongoose, most of the Steenbok and our sole Reedbuck.

Bushbuck were present in small numbers inside all the Camps as far as I can recollect, and Vervet Monkeys were mostly seen at the picnic sites for obvious reasons. 

The bigger mammals were basically everywhere. Impala were the most numerous animal on every single day, generally sticking to srubby and well-vegetated areas, as did Kudu and our single Nyala on the final day. Buffalo ran them close on one occasion, with a very large herd south of Lower Sabie. They, along with Zebra and Wildebeest were almost always in more open areas, and Giraffe stuck to the scrub. Hippo were seen every day, always in water with the exception of one seen on a night drive - it was remarkably quick and nimble on land, running as if on tip-toes. Almost every river and water body had Crocodiles, some of them absolutely gigantic. We saw White Rhinoceros just once, in the dusk as we approached Berg-en-Dal from Malelane, a trio of animals. Honey Badger was seen just once as it ran across the road in front of us, somewhere between Malelane and Crocodile Bridge on the S25. You just have to get lucky.

Where we were unlucky was with Wild Dog and Cheetah. We missed the former at Tshokwane, and we heard from some fellow night drive participants that they had also been seen on a morning walk from Lower Sabie. Cheetah we barely heard anyone even mention. Next time! Anyway, here is the animal list as best as I can remember it - we unfortunately didn't think to keep day lists, but I've pieced this together from photographs and distinct memories. I still think I am missing a couple of Lion from somewhere, and will update this if I can work it out.

Kruger National Park, South Africa - July 2023 - Trip List - Birds

We saw 146 species in six days, albeit that a full day was taken up driving to and from the park. It was a lot harder than I had imagined as we were mostly confined to the car and you couldn't follow up on any sightings. The best birding was in the Rest Camps at the start of each day. This obviously means that you can't get out into the Park when the camp gates open, which is the best time to be driving around as animals are still active, particularly predators. It depends what your priorities are. We did pretty well on both fronts, but looking back now I think I should have done more early morning birding. The kids probably would have thanked me for it too!

The full day by day list is below. This will give readers a view of what is common and what isn't so common. Although as mentioned most of our time was spent in the car where birding is restricted, I did of course stop very frequently, which often resulted in traffic backing up behind us assuming that we were enjoying killer views of a concealed predator. I ended up buying an "I'm a Birder" bumper sticker! The eBird trip report can be found here, and you can drill into each checklist and see numbers and so on. Of the 146 species seen, 95 were lifers, which is not entirely surprising given I had never been to that part of the continent before. There is surprisingly little overlap with the Western Cape, of the birds seen only about 40 are on that trip list, and about 10 of those are in any event global species you can see almost anywhere in either hemisphere like Grey Heron! In summary even when you're actually looking for animals you end up seeing quite a lot of birds. When you make a sustained effort you can see a lot of birds, especially within the Rest Camps.

Kruger National Park, South Africa - July 2023 - Day 6 - The Crocodile River and home

The trip was going well, with something like 127 bird species and approaching 30 mammals. The big 'misses' up to this point were Cheetah and Wild Dog, though we had seen four individual Leopards, double figures of Lion, Rhinos, lots of Hyenas and all sorts of grazers. We needed to leave the Park by 1pm to ensure that the drive back to Johannesburg was accomplished in daylight, even though the flight itself was not until 9pm. This unfortunately meant less time in the Park than theoretically would have been possible, but I just didn't want to take any chances at all.

Laughing Dove

We still had a bit of time though, and rather than head out as soon as the gates opened I went birding in the camp - despite being on safari, you simply cannot stop teenagers from sleeping, so I just left them there. One day they will realise how dumb they were but I didn't mind. Birding had been very hard from the car, and it had only really twigged for me that it was the camps that had the biggest eBird lists. And for good reason. I spent two hours walking around Berg-en-Dal from around 6.30am and recorded 42 species, by far the largest count of birds at any point on the trip, and ten new trip ticks. Would that I had adopted this strategy earlier! 

Starting at the dam I found Little Grebe. This had no doubt been there on our first stay at the camp and a Black Stork flew over while I was watching it which was rather a bonus. Also present were Kittlitz's Plover, Hamerkop, Little Egret, three Striated Heron, three Cattle Egret, Grey Heron, Great White Egret, two Pied Kingfisher and a Malachite Kingfisher. An African Black-headed Oriole was showing nicely on the Aloe here and singing from time to time. I then birded to the north of the gate along the footpath that does a loop around the camp, finding a flock of Speckled Mousebird, a Purple-Crested Turaco, and some stunning Scarlet-chested Sunbirds. Also Cape Crombec, Yellow-breasted Apalis, Retz's Helmetshrike, Sombre Greenbul, and a Red-backed Scrub Robin. There were basically birds everywhere and unlike being in the car I could actually take my time, wait or follow, and had a much better success rate of actually identifying them. 

Crested Barbet

Kurrichane Thrush

White-breasted Sunbird

Cape Crombec

Amethyst Sunbird

Red-backed Scrub Robin

Tawny-flanked Prinia

I went back to wake the kids up to find that not only were they now awake but that they had had breakfast and were thinking about packing! Hurrah! Full packing for the journey home then ensued, and like a fool I decided I would just pack the camera up to because I didn't want to flash it around as I was leaving the camp. This backfired almost instantly as we encounted our showiest Leopard yet as we approached Malelane. Henry, whose camera is supremely portable did rather well here. It was casually walking through the bush about 10m from the car, right out in the open, amazing.

The plan for the morning was to try and find Cheetah along the S25, which broadly runs east-west alongside the Crocodile River between Malelane and Crocodile Bridge. To cut a long story short we did not succeed and so Cheetah remains a big gap on our SA mammals list. They apparently need a large territory in which to hunt, which naturally spreads them out and diminishes your chances of finding one. Oh well. It was a nice drive though, adding some Green Woodhoopoe right next to the car, lots of birds of prey, an immense and very ugly Marabou Stork, and a Groundscraper Thrush. There were lots of Impala along here so I can see why it is good for Cheetah. Also great views of Warthog and Zebra, and we found yet another Leopard asleep in a tree.

Marabou Stork

Green Woodhoopoe

Our time was up and a long drive beckoned. We exited the Kruger at Crocodile Bridge and picked up Route 4 westbound. Two final new birds were seen as we drove along - a couple of Red-winged Starling on the fringes of the Park at about the level of Kambaku, and as we got closer to Johannesburg Grey-hooded Gulls began to appear overhead. The drive was incident-free, although we did end up doing the final half hour more or less in the dark having started from quite a long way further east. It had been a superb trip, one that the kids had declared to have been the best holiday ever - a shame that Mrs L and my middle daughter had not been there but there will be other opportunities. And now that we have returned unscathed maybe we can talk about booking it up.

Berg-en-Dal to Crocodile Bridge is about 2.5 hours along the S25

Kruger National Park, South Africa - July 2023 - Day 5 - Letaba back to Berg-en-Dal

I woke up early and left the kids sleeping for a bit whilst I explored the camp close to our hut. A 20 minute stroll produced a couple of Red-capped Robin-Chat and a a Kurrichane Thrush, which had been high on my list of Letaba targets. Unfortunately as it was still not fully light all my photos were terrible and I had to bin them. Today was a big day, we had to get all the way down to Berg-en-Dal before the camp gates closed, a journey of around five hours without stopping. We would be spending the whole day in the car. That said, we had over ten hours to drive those five hours, and there would be plenty of time to watch animals and look for birds.

Southern Red-billed Hornbill

We packed up and left the camp, and given all the time we had headed in the opposite direction, crossing the Letaba River and driving east towards Mozambique. We stopped on the bridge, the first time we had seen it in daylight, and were amazed by the numbers of birds. Well, I was amazed, the kids by this time were sick of birds. 200+ Little Swift, 20+ Grey-rumped Swallow and Plain Martin, a Saddle-billed Stork, Kittlitz's Plover and a lot more besides. There were also good numbers of Waterbuck.

At the Matambeni hide on the north bank of the river a stiff breeze made viewing difficult. In addition to a lot of Hippo and more Waterbuck we saw Malachite and Pied Kingfishers, 4 African Openbill, a Goliath Heron and lots of Lapwing. I masochistically counted the Egyptian Geese - 60. Not quite Wanstead standards but getting there.

By now 9am, we had to get going as the equation had now changed - eight hours to travel five and a half hours.... The next leg we basically did in one go, two hours back down to Satara. We did stop from time to time, including Red-faced Mousebird, another Kori Bustard and 3 more Southern Ground-Hornbill - what comically brilliant birds these are. This section was also good for raptors this morning, with 7 Bataleur, Tawny Eagle and Martial Eagle. 

Bataleur

Tawny Eagle

Martial Eagle

We stopped for fuel and snacks at Satara camp. Whilst the kids went to the loo I had a quick ten minutes around the car park. This was brilliant! Both Hornbills, Black-collared, Crested and Pied Barbets, a Cardinal Woodpecker, Golden-tailed Woodpecker, Hoopoe, Brown-crowned Tchagra, Spectacled Weaver and Common Bulbul amongst other things - five new trip birds in as many minutes.

Common Bulbul

White-breasted Sunbird

Provisions sorted we carried on, taking the S100 east - this had good reviews as an excellent game drive and so it proved to be, with numerous Giraffe, Wildebeest, Elephant, Zebra, Impala, Kudu and a trio of Lions resting in some long grass but also causing another traffic jam. Towards the end of our return back to Satara a Little Sparrowhawk flew over the car.

Yellow-billed Oxpecker

It was now 1pm and we still had a long way to go. The first leg down to Tshokwane took about an hour, and we stopped at the picnic site there for a late lunch. Another Saddle-billed Stork was in the river here, along with Striated Heron and Black Crake, and at some point on the journey we had come across our first Brown Snake-Eagle, Hooded Vulture, and Red-crested Bustard.

Hooded Vulture

Red-crested Bustard

Black-winged Kite

The final leg down to Berg-en-Dal took around 4 hours, the quickest we could have made it in would have been about 3 hours. The speed limits in Kruger are low by design, there are plenty of hazards and also you see more if you drive slowly. We saw plenty of game on this drive, in fact I would go so far as to say that there is rarely any period where you don't see animals. Impala are the most frequently encountered, and when you find them you usually find loads, but Elephants are common. Zebra and Buffalo are also common, and so are Giraffe really. By this stage there were not many of the 'big' animals that we had not seen, and we were soon to reduce that tally by one. As we approached Berg-en-Dal with about ten minutes to go before the gates closed we were amazed to find three White Rhino just off the road. Wow! Certainly this sector of the Park was rumoured to be the best place for this species, but we had been convinced that we were going to miss them as not only had we not seen any but we hadn't really met anyone else who had. We took a few photos in the gathering gloom and made the camp with a few minutes to spare. One last brai? Oh go on then.