Following an overnight flight the group met up with
Nick Bray and our excellent local guide Charles Rhyn at Windhoek Airport and within a short while had
seen a few South African Cliff Swallows
and a pair of the scarce Orange River
Francolins before reaching Windhoek. Not a bad start to what promises to be
an exciting African adventure.
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| Orange River Francolin |
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| South African Cliff Swallow |
By early afternoon we had arrived at our
destination of Daan Viljoen Reserve near Windhoek and as it was almost 2
o’clock we dived straight into the restaurant for a late lunch. Afterwards we
had a little time to rest in our very nice bungalows before meeting at 4.30pm
for an afternoon walk along the road. The strong wind hampered our birding and
the surrounding area was a little quieter than we would have liked, but we
still managed to see a number of really nice birds. A favourite of mine is Golden-breasted Bunting and we had some
rather brief views of a pair feeding on a slope above us, in company with
another star bird – Violet-eared Waxbill.
We also had nice scope views of Mountain
Wheatear, Short-toed Rock Thrush
and Red-billed Spurfowl before
continuing our walk along the road.
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| Swallow-tailed Bee-eater |
We picked up quite a lot of commoner
species such as both Common and Black-faced
Waxbills, Marico Flycatcher, Familiar Chat, a distant soaring Martial Eagle, Rock Kestrel, Namaqua Dove,
Pearl-spotted Owlet, Alpine Swift, Greater Striped Swallow, Groundscraper
Thrush, Scarlet-chested Sunbird,
African Hoopoe, with several nice
close views of the delightful Swallow-tailed Bee-eater.
So not a bad haul, although a pair of Pririt
Batis, Burnt-necked Eremomela, Long-billed Crombec, Cape Bunting and Rufous-vented Tit-warbler were also rather cool, whilst a Crimson-breasted Shrike posed briefly
as well.
It was also really good to kickstart our mammal
list with Chacma Baboon, Hartmann’s Mountain Zebra, Giraffe, Gemsbok (Southern Oryx), and Eland.
Safe to say we were all rather tired tonight after a long journey to get here
from the UK and after an excellent dinner we headed straight to our nice rooms
for some well earned rest.
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