Last Friday we invited Mike and Shirley Kokot to join us on a birding trip to De Hoop.
Our route took us eastwards from Hermanus, past Stanford (without stopping) towards Riviersonderend, however, we soon diverted onto the Sandy’s Glen road. This proved to be a worthwhile decision, as we saw a number of birds and enjoyed the beautiful rural setting. The highlight of this section was a Brown-hooded Kingfisher – an uncommon and highly sought after species for this area. We joined the road to Napier some 12 kms north of the village, so were able to divert into the sewage farm in order to look for water fowl. We noted a few, including Avocets, Three-banded Plovers and the usual ducks.
Proceeding on to Bredasdorp we saw little of interest. Surprising was the lack of raptors with only Black-winged Kites occasionally seen on the telephone wires. The lack of birds did not mean we were bored as the canola fields were absolutely beautiful and the wheat was green and lush.
From Bredasdorp we headed east on the road to Malgas. This is prime Lark country and we were not disappointed, bagging Agulhas Long-billed, Red Capped and Large-billed Larks, along with numerous other species. Our destination was Potberg and the chance to see Cape Vultures. We had hoped that these might be down in the fields, but had no such luck as they were, apart from one loner that flew low over us, confined to soaring high over the mountain, where we saw around 30 birds.
By this time we were getting hungry, so turned back to De Hoop main entrance and the restaurant on the lagoon, where we enjoyed a light lunch, before a walk on the lagoon edge where we saw Long-billed Pipit (now named Nicholson’s Pipit!) and Southern Tchagra. We were delighted to drive through good herds of Eland and Bontebok, with many Ostriches and Baboons in attendance. De Hoop was gearing up for the Agulhas marathon which was to take place on Saturday and there were people and vehicles everywhere! There was no point in staying!
Our journey home was undertaken at speed, staying on the tar road as the sun was in our eyes and we did not anticipate any new species.
We saw a total of around 80 species on the day and I was able to add 4 new ones to my Challenge list.
roncorylus 