The Local Birdshow

A few weeks ago we met up with a couple of friends to go see a birdshow not far from us. It was a great day to end the week off. A very nice place, and free! Donations are welcome to help ( Which we did)

This guy above was just amazing. I've never seen a bird with as much character as this one! It was probably the best part of the day for me.


Below are some of the other pictures I shot during our time there. Hope you enjoy!

 My wife Stace, got to feed this Harris Hawk,above, with the falconry glove and all. Quite an experience for her I'm sure!

Till next time...

Wedding of note!

So my wedding was absolutely phenomenal! Obviously i wasn't able to take these photos as I was the man of the day. The following photos were taken by a good mate of mine,who did a fantastic job.

The wedding was set at Glen Afric country lodge about 10 minutes from my farm house.

That's me on the right with my best man. Eagerly waiting for the bride, the word "nervous" is an understatement!

These guys surrounded us around "The wedding tree" throughout the ceremony. It was amazing.

Above is my wife and I. This part of the day was fantastic, being able touch these beautiful creatures is a once in a lifetime experience.

Another photo with the elephants. A proper wedding album picture I think!

This shot was taken when we arrived at the reception after the ceremony. The guests were lost for words when the Elephants followed us.

That is all for now. When everything settles down, I will carry on with my own photos and blog about them.

Till next time.......

The feeding spot...

So I put out an apple to bring the birds closer to the house. It's amazing how quick they can find it, the appear out of nowhere in minutes!

This Cape White-eye above is as tame as anything. It usually hangs around with 3 or 4 others. In summer, when the Mulberry trees are at their fullest, these White-eyes, and all the other birds I'm about to mention, don't even notice the apples i put out so I don't even bother. The damn Vervet monkeys come and steal them anyway! We learnt our lesson parking our cars under the trees though. Man those mulberries can give birds the runs. Very hard to clean the windscreens!

Crested Barbet

Black Collared Barbet

We have 2 species of barbets, seen above.The Crested Barbet always comes in pairs. The male constantly trying to show off and dancing around is mate. The Black collared barbet seems to just pass through, eats his fill, and dissapears for weeks.

This is known as an Arrowmarked Babbler. They always come in groups of about 6. They very boisterous and just bombard the tree where I put any fruit, chasing everything else away. Bloody noisy things as well. I guess that's where the "babbler" in the name comes from! Very nosy as well. They often come and sit on our window sill and watch us lying in bed when it's really early.

We have a hell of a lot of Thrushes as well. Above is a Kurrichane Thrush taking a bath just next to the feeding "tree". Along with them, we have Olive Thrush and Groundscraper Thrush. Brilliant birds as they constantly scratching around and demolish all those annoying, pesty bugs in the garden.

Till next time. Keep following because in a couple of weeks I will be blogging about our wedding we will be having in the african bush. Hyenas,cheetahs and elephants to come!!

From my back yard

Ok so I think its about time I should show you some of the scenery in my yard. A little breakdown. We live in an old farm house which was built around the 1930's. Its situated on a pecan nut orchard. I stand to be corrected, but its about 60 hectares in size. The part of it we stay on is the oldest part of it. You can tell just by looking at the trees. The largest on the farm and they produce most of the nuts. Harvest time is just around the corner. I CAN'T WAIT!! When I go for hikes and to take some pics, I walk about a km or 2 until I reach the Magaliesburg river. It's truly a breathtaking sight.

The orchard in winter

The orchard in spring/summer

The hiking trail goes on for miles. If you have the energy and time, you can go right up to the foothills of the mountain. other than hiking, you can also do it on mountainbike and also book at one of the surrounding lodges to go by horseback. What i still want to try is go on a zipline tour through the tree canopies along some of the gorges.

The clean mountain river water is really refreshing in the hot summer months. The piece of river closest to me is riddled with rock pools. Once again, the birdlife is terrific, a mixture of bush birds and aquatic birds, as well as farely large raptors. I have often found the remains of dead birds from them. What I still have to try and see, are the few leopards and jackals amongst the bushy surroundings. I have found their spoor, but that's about it!

Then, after a good days hike, we like to come home, have a good south african braai, and chill by our outside fire pit, seen below. Life is good right now :)

It is like we are forever on holiday, and I can promise you this, even though I have to commute to the city for work, it is all worth it to come home to this!

Pilanesburg national park

Myself and Stace decided to go to this park for the day to see some of the bigger mammals we have. Wow we saw a lot! No predators unfortunately as it was the middle of summer and way too hot. Regardless, I got some pretty decent shots. We arrived at about 7AM and were one of the first ones there which was great. I was so excited because I hadn't been to a national park in about 16 years, which was the Kruger.

This Impala and her young were the first ones I snapped.It wasn't even 5 minutes through the gate. 

There must've been about 50 of them, as always.

I managed to get this great picture of a dung beetle rolling a fresh ball from the elephants droppings. They are amazing creatures. He would roll the ball a few cm and then climb on top of it to see which direction he was going and making sure it was safe. There are even signs on the road warning drivers to watch where they going so not to run them over!

Birdlife was plentiful, much to my liking. I captured this Lesser masked weaver singing away and trying to entice a worthy female to come and inspect his newly weaved nest.The one female who came to check it out wasn't really impressed and flew off to the next male. Poor guy. It can't be easy building something so intricate with just a beak and feet!

We were in for a real treat when we drove up this narrow and quiet dirt road. I noticed quite a few broken branches around and was certain there were elephants close by. Around the corner we found a small water hole and snapped this beautiful shot. This is probably one of my best ones so far.

 This Zebra was nice and close to our car. Great for a "Kodak Moment" There were quite a few babies around as well which was nice to see. Always in the same vicinity as the Blue Wildebeest. As far as I know, Zebras have a keen eyesight and Wildebeest have keen hearing so together, make a good team when looking out for predators. They looked very relaxed here so, unfortunate for us, knew we wouldn't be seeing any carnivores!

Well, that is all for now. Keep a look out for my next one in the following days to come.

The Challenging ones...

 Right, so I really have found my match in terms of photography.......Trying to capture the perfect shot of a bird in flight. Damn bloody difficult! I'm always too early or too late, proper flaws of an amateur! Oh well, practice makes perfect I guess.

 On the right is a Grey Hornbill. When the seasons change to the cooler times of the year, I get a flock of no less than 15 of them. They seem to search for the grubs hiding beneath all the fallen leaves from the pecan nut trees. They are very difficult to photo in my area as they are quite shy. Using a 300mm lens, I have to get kind of close as well which isn't easy. I captured this one by pure chance. Yes I know, it is no way near to being compared to a professional photographer, but I don't think it's that bad?



Below is a Whitebacked Vulture. It was on Christmas morning of 2011. We were busy preparing a Tarzan roast which is basically a spit roast that is hung above a fire instead of using a motorized assembly. It obviously took a liking to the sight of the leg of pork! We have a vulture sanctuary just up on the mountain by us. They are often circling high up in the wind thermals. Sadly, these magnificent creatures are endangered, largely due to eating carcasses that have been poisoned.
 .

This Grey Headed Gull was quite a treat. Keeping in mind that I am give or take, about 600km from the nearest ocean, it has found refuge here by the dam! It just kept gliding continuously  up and down the river where i was fishing. It was just perfect. Every now and then it would fly down close to the water and catch small fish.

I really like this one. When we first moved into our house, all I had was my bird field guide. No camera as yet. Seeing all these birds got my mind set on getting one. I decided to make a feeding spot on this tree to attract the fruit eaters. These are known as Red Billed WoodHoopoes. The one parent, seen here with the red bill, would eat its fill, and then regurgitate the remainder into either one of its four young. It was fascinating to watch how the youngsters progressed and learned from its two parents.

Some of my first's

Right, I have just started blogging and already I'm addicted!






OK let's get going. Below is one of my favourite resident birds. Commonly known as the greyheaded bush shrike, the locals call it the "spookvoel" Afrikaans for "ghost bird" because of the eerie call it makes. The male, seen here in the photo, is a real loner, calling out for a suitable female to breed with. You can see here that he also offers gifts to try and entice her. You can tell this is one of my first photos. Off centre and a bit blurred in some spots. I was still getting the feel of my camera, so please bare with me, they will improve as we go on!

This photo below was a particular hard one. I think it was about 40+ photos taken to capture just this one!I used a macro lens zoomed to 55mm for this. It still is one of my favourites.

Below is a small spotted genet, a nocturnal feline. My dogs were going ballistic the one night so I strapped on my headlamp to investigate. I heard a commotion in the trees so I quickly ran in and got my camera. I was really excited to get a night shot of whatever was lurking in the trees! With the help of my headlamp I managed to focus on it, using a 300mm lens. I took quite a few good ones, but one uploaded picture should suffice.

Well that's it for now. More photos to follow shortly!