We didn’t change camps today so we decided to have an early morning drive for a few hours and stop and have coffee and then head back for breakfast/brunch. Sunrise is around 6:30am so we headed out then first on the tar road and then onto gravel roads to get to the picnic spot. We didn’t see many animals or birds except we saw two rhino again and it looked like they were sleeping (or at least sitting down).
The picnic spot was on the river and you could walk down to the bank of the river. It is probably one of the best picnic spots I have seen actually based simply on location. The ever present vervet monkeys were so cheeky they managed to steal a packet of rusks even though we were actually sitting at the table. We managed to recover most of them except the one the monkey made off. Birding was really good on the river’s edge and we added a few to the trip list and some of us even managed to add a few lifers at the picnic spot. The drive back to the camp was along a gravel road and we did see more game (including buffalo, giraffe etc) but no predators.
After breakfast we decided to do a late morning camp walk. We walked for just over an hour around the camp in that time I added 4 lifers. At one point we had just seen one lifer when I turned and looked at another tree and spotted another lifer. It was the most rewarding camp walk I have ever done. The bird life in the camp was incredible. The best bird today was undoubtedly seeing a Narina Trogon. It has been one of my bogey birds in that I have been in places we should have seen it and haven’t managed to. It is quite a shy bird so not easily seen so I was very pleased to spot it and have really good views of it today in the camp. I have already seen 11 lifers on the trip. My initial view was that seeing 10 lifers would be good so I have easily beaten my expectations. The trip list is currently on 161 birds. I had set a target of 200 birds and so that should be easily reachable now.
We spent the early afternoon in the camp just lazying around and some people caught up on emails and some work and then late afternoon we headed out for a game drive. We didn’t see much (it was still pretty hot with temperatures around 30 degrees) and at one point I thought we may not even add to the bird trip list but in the end we did add a few to that list.
Back in time for a braai for dinner and now off to sleep!
Until tomorrow (assuming we have some means to send a blog)
P, H, O, A, B & S (those last two because they missed the rhino today and they were the lead car though B redeemed himself by spotting a lifer for me)