Atlasville, 19 Mar 2006
Today I made a day trip to the Pilanesberg National Park, a drive of just over 200 km and about 2½ hours. This meant an early departure as I entered the park just before 09:00. It was my 11th visit since my first in 1985, when we lived in Stilfontein, only a year after the park was established. However, my 2nd visit was much more recently in 1999, so my 10th from Atlasville.
For me, as a geologist the Pilanesberg is a special place. The rocks here are 1,200 million years old and represent an ancient caldera, essentially a collapsed volcano. Some of the minerals in these rocks are very rare, found in only a few other places in the world.
I entered the park at the Bakubung Gate, which is next to the Sun City resort and casino, and headed towards Lengau Dam, where in the summer months you are just about guaranteed to see African Sacred Ibis, which I did. Together with the ibis at the dam were White-breasted Cormorant (now regarded as a sub-species of Great Cormorant), Cinnamon-breasted Bunting, Tawny-flanked Prinia, Southern Grey-headed Sparrow and this juvenile Southern Masked Weaver that doesn’t yet seem to have mastered easier ways of perching.
The rest of the route around the park turned up some good sightings of African Firefinch, White-throated Robin-Chat, Long-billed Crombec, Cape White-eye, Chestnut-vented Warbler, Dusky Indigobird, Acacia Pied Barbet and a single lifer for the day with Quailfinch. None of these, however, provided good photo opportunities.
Those that did pose well for the camera were Spotted Flycatcher, Yellow-fronted Canary, Grey Go-away-bird, Black-collared Barbet, Pin-tailed Whydah, Marico Flycatcher, Red-backed Shrike, Rufous-naped Lark, Lesser Striped Swallow, Cape Starling and Lilac-breasted Roller.
The Pilanesberg is the only place I have ever seen Brown Hyena, once only, in all my years of birding/game-viewing, but no such luck today. I had to make do with very distant views of elephant and giraffe apart from these Blue Wildebeest and Common Warthog.
The butterflies were out in force, though, and amongst others I saw Broad-bordered Grass Yellow, Common Zebra Blue, Topaz-spotted Blue, Black-striped Hairtail and Citrus Swallowtail.
