Table Mountain's cute but Kruger steals the show!

Rush-hour traffic [Polokwane; Limpopo]

Brave the shake, rattle & roll [cable-way] or, in winter, the long, wet, windy, winding, walk to the top of Cape Town's Table Mountain & touch the bi-polar clouds racing here, then there; confused. Look towards the Atlantic, swivel left and enjoy man's ingenuity & architectural splendour. Space-challenged neighbours pass a cup of tea back & forth across the *payshio railing (*patio / balconette [a very small balcony or viewing deck]).. Rotate a touch to your right and behold Robben Island, the seat of South Africa's political past. A twitch further right - 'The Waterfront'. 90 degrees more & stare into the wind-induced, tear-filled eyes of the seething, red-jacketed multitude, well within your personal space, swiveling in synchronized unison, huddled, sheltered, cowered even - out of the wind... Cute!

Be adventurous; be daring; be bold & take the road less traveled, north; far north! Plant yourself at Kruger's Pafuri & swivel this way, that-way, any way. You decide. Nobody dictates your visual or auditory experience here. It's a smorgasbord of sensory delight. This is no hop-on, hop-off cliche. This is the Kruger National Park & this is Africa.

In the event that I 'fall off the boat' & my life-jacket springs a leak next pelagic off Cape Town's southerly point, let me say this; Pafuri isn't what it used to be, far from it. She's still in care. Early-season floods uprooted the local fauna & turned 'the camp' to mush & kindle.

Notwithstanding the natural calamity, there are very few spots in Kruger more wilderness-like than Wilderness' Pafuri Camp (ie: 'the camp'). Sadly the camp remains closed & more's the pity. Give me a pick & shovel; a two-night stay, once a year, for life & bob's your uncle, up she'll go! [To all my Wilderness friends..]

Crested Guineafowl - more numerous than ever before

By default then we were obliged to stay further afield, further south, at Punda Maria, a second cousin at best. A second cousin, that is, until you've walked the Flycatcher Trail, up the hill and behind the aging infrastructure.

Ignore the sewage pipe & look up. Swifts, spinetails, swallows, saw-wings, bat hawks, hawk-eagles, falcons, kestrels, eagles, buzzards, kites & vultures entertain; some perform the matinee, others the late, late-afternoon show.

Close your mouth & look down. Sunbirds, bulbuls, greenbuls, sparrowhawks, scrub-robins, robin-chats, nicators, flycatchers, hornbills, helmet-shrikes, shrikes, bush-shrikes, batisises, thrushes, starlings & guineafowls support the artists overhead. An after-dinner stroll to the hide which overlooks a natural pan presents buffalo, elephant, lion & leopard up close & personal. Hyena and jackal serenade the night. Enjoy repeat performances the next day & the day after & the day after that & the day after that that &...

Retz's Helmet-shrike [juv] - very cool

Retz's Helmet-shrike [ad] - also very cool

Arnot's Chat - [like me the male has the white-cap]

Since Punda Maria is such a hardship why were we there, again? Two reasons. First & foremost we wanted to revisit the Mahonie Loop or the S99 for the seriously uncool; a gravel track around the bend & back, behind the camp and a must for any aspiring birder. Secondly, we wanted Arnot's Chat & Dickinson's Kestrel for our 800 Challenge & our 700 Challenge respectively. Any birder worth their tuck speaks in tongues & on bended knee whenever the Mahonie Loop is up for discussion. Atypical habitat, high rainfall and a topographical mish-mash account for the very many specials this area has yielded in the past. Pennant-winged Nightjar perform at late-evening leks. Orange-winged Pytilia, Southern Hyliota, Racket-tailed Roller & White-breasted Cuckooshrike are also seasonally regular here & nowhere else.

Dickinson's Kestrel

Since we were out-of-season we concentrated our efforts up the road, rather than round the bend, for Arnot's Chat & the equally localised, if not more impressive, Dickinson's Kestrel.

Arnot's Chat is first heard, then seen. An unobtrusive tssssp breaks the reverie. Another tssssp a few yards left swivels the eyes, left... Tsssssp on the right jerks the attention right back right & seemingly emanates ghost-like from the very depths of the mature Mopani woodland. Drag your eyes away from the canopy, drop down to half-mast & if you've paid your dues, there he or she tsssps. Magical! Wonderful yes but not nearly as sublime as the little, wide-eyed, non-birding boy who after inquiring why we had stopped to look at trees beamed broadly at his Arnold's Chat. A birder born! Come down from your mountain & listen to the silence. Tomorrow is in good hands, thanks to Arnold's Chat.

Kruger's silent Hippolais - Upcher's anyone?

We kicked off the 800 Challenge (herein-forever-after '800C') in the Kruger National Park, by default rather than by design. 2012 had come and gone and whilst most revelers were seeing the Old Year out, we were tucked up in bed, blissfully unaware of the festivities and the driving rain.

4:30 am - Lower Sabie (KNP) 1 Jan 2013

There is something about the dawn chorus in the KNP, particularly in summer. Most will say that the dawn chorus in good forest habitat is the epitome of birding but for me, at least, the Southern Ground Hornbill's du du dududu / hu hu huhu is early-morning Africa at its best. Listening to that, along with the raucous calls of Crested Francolin, with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a hot-cross-bun-flavoured rusk (absolute poison but bloody brilliant) in the other, is why we bird. It's a catharsis for the soul and puts a little perspective on the hum-drum of life we take far too seriously.

Having set our 800C criteria to exclude ID by call / song neither Hornbill nor Francolin made the list until much later. Nevertheless we were off to a decent start aided and abetted by our proximity to the Sabi River. From our patio in Lower Sabie camp the first bird 'in the bag' was Little Swift (nesting under the eaves). By day-end we'd seen 128 species including a wing-tagged Marabou Stork (number: S188). Highlights for day 1 were Lesser Kestrel, Croaking Cisticola, Pallid Harrier, White-crowning Lapwing, Monotonous Lark, Steppe Eagle and a single Greater Kestrel, our first in the KNP. Other notables included Eurasian Hobby, Great Spotted Cuckoo and a very confiding male Coqui Francolin.

6:20pm - High-water bridge Sabie River (Lower Sabie)

Although we were happy with our first day's haul we had to be careful not to let the 'dips' take precedence over the highlights. We'd spent a good deal of the day looking for three particular birds ie: Black Coucal, which we haven't seen in the Park but had been reported recently on the S128; Madagascar Cuckoo, which we'd seen in the park recently and Thick-billed Cuckoo, a bogey-bird for us until we had good views of an adult bird near the Bume river on the S108 a week before.

We dipped on all three and learn't a lesson (I think..). Spending too much time looking for a specific bird, even in good habitat, wastes valuable time... There is more than enough time to stress about the dips later in the year and why stress today when you can put it off to tomorrow..!

By day 4 we'd broadly covered the southern and central sections of the Park, seen 186 species and improved our photos of Retz's Helmetshrike & Stierling's Wren-Warbler. A case of diminishing returns given that we'd seen 128 on day 1.. Although the veld is lush and in places standing-water is still visible, particularly from recent rains, the Red-billed Quelea flocks are smaller than usual, raptors less conspicuous and quails almost entirely absent. Nevertheless, we did record Lanner Falcon, Harlequin & Common Quail, Lesser Spotted Eagle and Eurasian Hobby. As always we checked the Sabie for African Finfoot and Lower Sabie camp for the crepuscular Bat Hawk but dipped on both.

We can't, as yet, lay claim to any 'mega' or even a rarity. Good birds yes, but rarities not. We can however claim our first sighting of Common Reedbuck in the park on the same S128 where we'd searched for Black Coucal; a side-bet perk we hadn't expected but suspect will play a big part as we continue our journey. Strangers; people we'd met along the way, intrigued by the challenge, are no longer strangers and now follow our blog.

Here's one for the fundis. When is a silent Hippolais an Upcher's and not an Olive-tree? We found a Hippolais warbler with continuous [some might say, exuberant] tail-wag early on the 3rd of January on the S39 2.5km north of Ratelpan Hide. I'm not familiar with Upcher's at all so I'm loath to even make the inference. Even so, anyone in the area more familiar with the distinguishing characteristics might want to keep an eye out for the bird. As always, getting a photo, any photo, proved impossible given that we were confined to the vehicle.