Tag Archives: rare

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Flushing Fan-Tailed Grassbirds in the Proteas and Penny Gums

There’s something special about bird watching.

PHOTO BY PIXABAYFebruary 15, 2025

I’m back in the bird challenge for 2025. I bombed out in the early 30s – in August, maybe – of 2024’s 52-week challenge. That felt like good going for being at home for all except two of those weeks.

I learned a lot about birds right under my nose here, including rarities. Two of these amazing finds were the wintering spotted ground thrush and orange ground thrush, which both just happened to appear in my little slice of forest.

If I hadn’t walked down into the dark gorge below the house in winter, I wouldn’t have found them at all. Now that I know they’re there, that’s two more birds I can potentially list this year when the time comes.

Mostly, it’s just exciting to know that I’m preserving some habitat they can shelter in for the next few decades (let’s hope!).

A Little Trail Running Turned Out To Be a Big Birding Win

While exploring, I also found a wonderful fan-tailed grassbird. It was in the middle of some penny gums when I took a little detour on my usual route.

It’s quite hard to describe that moment. The penny gums are beautiful and smell so good. The king proteas nearby were in full flower on one lonely tree.

In front of this, in the penny gums, the bright yellow Cape longclaws were trying to hide in the longish tufts of grass.

I was sneaking up on them to see how close I could get to those skittish birds that are all along the road in Oribi Gorge. As I came around the bend, I flushed the fan-tailed grassbird instead.

It took me a little while to click.

The gorgeous little bird was in its full spring plumage. Bright and clean, it perched on top of a young penny gum tree and looked quite indignant about my disturbance.

Behind it, there was the view of the brown farm slopes dropping down to the Mzimkhulu.

At that point, everything else was just sprouting tiny, almost transparent leaves. I knew they would grow and darken into full green foliage in a few weeks, but right then, the freshness – new life – was palpable. The ocean further beyond that shone in the sun.

Was I in some lost world? As I heard the nearby quarry machines whirring up, the grassbird flew off. I guess not. But it was still so beautiful.

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Making a Racket Again

“There was apparently a sighting in Harding a few years back, but it was still incredibly rare to see it here. It was also my first time seeing one.”

An example of a racket-tailed roller. PHOTO WIKIPEDIA

May 30, 2023 

There have been two phenomenal birding sightings in our area this last month. One was on a telephone line, and one was in a puddle.

I’ve been off social media for a while trying to eke out time for my many commitments as a mommy to three little people. Scrolling steals too much of that, which means I haven’t seen the South Coast Birder’s group in a while. I miss it.

Not One But Two Amazing Bird Sightings in Oribi Gorge

Anyway, the first sighting was by yours truly. A casual drive-by and a glance up at a telephone wire revealed a turquoise shimmer on a biggish little bird, undoubtedly a roller.

We get quite a few European rollers here over the summer. I love to admire these rather impressive and beautiful birds whenever they pop up. Maybe because I always used to love seeing the lilac-breasted rollers in the July holiday visits to the Kruger Park as a child. They would be shining in stunning purple and blue on top of a brown bush, a striking contrast that’s not easy to miss.

So, seeing rollers in my backyard as an adult has been rather special. But at the last minute, I saw this one jump and turn around. As it faced the other direction, I saw long tail streamers behind it, with little rounded bits on the end. I gasped a little. It was truly spectacular, but I wasn’t aware of why. I didn’t know that European rollers had long tails like that! Wow.

It turns out they don’t.

The Bird Wasn’t What I Thought It Was, But Close

I drove home, chatting to the kids, looking for reedbuck, jackal buzzards, water mongoose, and tractors like we do every day. We spied vultures above Leopard Rock. We saw a jiga duza (a Bell loader) that always gets my boys very excited.

So, when I got home and remembered to look at my birding app, I was shocked to find that what I had seen was not, in fact, a European roller at all. I wouldn’t have known that it wasn’t one of those gorgeous blue birds so common on our telephone wires in the summertime if I hadn’t driven past at the exact moment it jumped up and showed me its spindly tail.

It was a Racket-tailed Roller! And it was hundreds of kilometres south of where the map distribution indicated it should be. I couldn’t believe it.

I even messaged a birding fundi to check that I wasn’t going mad. I wasn’t. There was apparently a sighting in Harding a few years back, but it was still incredibly rare to see it here. It was also my first time seeing one ever.

Maybe, I should be travelling with my camera in the backseat instead of chattering farm boys shouting with delight at the tractors, TLBs, and cane-loading machinery we pass.

Oh, and the other sighting was by one of the farmers down the road who saw another wayward bird, the African Crake. Birder’s eat your heart out in Oribi Gorge, hey!

Published here.