I visited the Kruger Nationwide Park on common twice a 12 months with my household within the eleven years that I lived in South Africa, giving us ample alternative to discover most areas of this faboulous place. On this and several other following posts, I’ll share some impressions of the birding in and round a number of the camps we stayed at within the park. First up is Pretoriuskop camp, one of many southernmost camps within the park, situated in a scenic lanscape with scattered koppies (small rocky hills).
Pretoriuskop camp itself is really wonderful for birds and, like most camps within the park, a spot that I loved exploring in the course of the warmth of the day, between our morning and afternoon recreation drives. Aside from the ever-present starlings, Brown-headed Parrot (featured picture), Spectacled Weaver and Gray-headed Bushshrike have been simply seen. The spotlight nevertheless was Pearl-spotted Owlet, of which there appeared to be a pair current within the camp. The simplest option to find them was to walk round and hearken to the alarm calls of passerines, indicating the presence of an owlet in a close-by tree.
We didn’t discover the woodlands surrounding the camp as productive for large mammals as different areas of the park (though we did see a leopard, which is something however anticipated). Nevertheless, this was compensated by the attractive surroundings, and by ample birdlife. In a riverine space, we got here throughout African Black Geese and a bunch of Retz’s Helmetshrikes, very engaging birds that I at all times love watching.
We have been additionally fortunate to return throughout an eruption of termite alates after a thunderstorm, which generally is a feast for birders as a lot as it’s for birds, as anyone will know who has come throughout one. Alates are the winged reproductive people that begin a brand new colony – if they aren’t eaten earlier than, that’s, as a result of these erruptions attract numerous birds in search of a straightforward meal. Aside from the vary of hornbill and starling species, we have been entertained by numerous passerines and cuckoos, together with each morphs of the Jacobin Cuckoo, proper subsequent to our automotive.
A traditional chicken of the Kruger Nationwide Park is the Bateleur, and we loved an in depth view of this chicken because it was perched in a tree, fairly much less frequent than the usual sighting of them up within the skies. These are actually outstanding birds and it was incredible to absorb its spectacular plumage up-close.
This space of the Kruger Nationwide Park could be very completely different to all the areas additional north, and whereas I didn’t see something that can’t be seen in different spots of the park, the attractive rocky panorama produces a incredible setting for game-watching and viewing some a lot of southern Africa’s fascinating woodland species.
