I visited Vilanculos as soon as with my household, primarily to do the issues most individuals do when visiting this web site – having fun with the coast, consuming nice fish and snorkelling. That the world was unbelievable for birds nevertheless, and as I had by no means been this far north on the Mozambiquan coast, there have been a number of lifers and different attention-grabbing birds that I bagged right here.
Vilanculos is now very well-known in southern African birding circles due to the specials that flip up on the San Sebastian Peninsula, with Saunders’s Tern being the star, and consistent with the Patagonia picnic desk impact, specials like Crab Plover, Eurasian Oystercatchers and Damara Terns additionally hanging round. This web site turned a goal of many a twicher with the invention of the Saunders’s Tern in 2019. I visited Vilanculos a couple of years earlier than this and was subsequently not conscious of this not-to-be-missed web site.
Due to this fact, many of the birding was constrained to the campsite the place we stayed. There have been fairly a couple of widespread birds round, together with indigobirds and finches. A while was spent watching an approachable Inexperienced-winged Pytilia. After I first noticed this species as a fledging birder a couple of years earlier, I turned very excited. As I had not but come throughout it in my area information, my “logical” conclusion was that this have to be a uncommon species. Trying again, I’ve seen that I had this assumption far more than can be statistically justified when coming throughout birds I couldn’t ID in my first 12 months of birding (once I began out with birding, I additionally as soon as misidentified what I now know was a Wooden Sandpiper as a Lesser Yellowlegs). Due to this specific reminiscence nevertheless, I nonetheless all the time vastly get pleasure from watching Inexperienced-winged Pytilias (and much more so their orange-winged cousins, which I’ve seen in Zimbabwe).
The time my pleasure was really justified is once I seen that among the smaller birds feeding on the campsite lawns had been Lemon-breasted Canaries, a lifer again then and till at present this stays my solely sighting of this species. I finally additionally discovered their nest in a palm frond.
One other subtropical lowland particular that I got here throughout on the campsite was a Collared Palm-Thrush. This fowl is restricted to the north-eastern fringe of the southern African subregion that types the extent of the area of curiosity of most birders (and can be the area coated by most guidebooks). Within the mornings, it sang from the tops of timber dotted on the small campsite, no higher option to indulge a lifer.
The hinterland revealed my first Olive Bee-eaters, which I had anticipated to see right here. They had been hanging out with some Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters which made for a very good comparability – I feel these species really was the identical mannequin when somebody determined to color them otherwise, because the giss (basic impression of measurement and form) appears precisely the identical, the one distinction being their colouration. I assume that is really pure choice in non-technical phrases, with the “somebody” being varied selective forces. Then in fact the “somebody” would additionally have to have used high-quality paint so it may very well be handed on from one technology to the following… Sadly, I solely managed to discover a picture of the blue-cheeks in my archive…
The go to made me wanting to discover the numerous glorious birding spots of Mozambique additional to the north, significantly Mt Gorongosa, the Beira grasslands, and the coutadas (searching concessions coated in miombo). Nonetheless, I by no means ended up visiting this area due to ongoing safety issues within the space. I hope that issues will finally quiet down right here – the world has a lot to supply for guests (particularly birders) and particularly the native individuals deserve extra peaceable situations after many years of instability.
