Atlasville, 6 May 2007

I went with a fellow birder to Barberspan Nature Reserve in North West province yesterday to hunt for the vagrant Wilson’s Phalarope that had been photographed there a few days ago. We managed to locate a possible candidate, which flew off before we’d really got a good look at it. However, size was right, in flight the bird was silent, and we could clearly see a white rump and grey tail. Great so far! We were not able to get a good fix on where the bird landed and I ran off in the general direction and took hand-held, full zoom and manual focus shots of a small wader in grass at the far water’s-edge.

Later processing showed that it was a Wood Sandpiper, beginning to acquire its breeding plumage. All the other Wood Sandpipers that we disturbed called on take-off and in flight, and tails showed the typical lightly banded appearance, not appearing fully grey. I had probably not photographed the same bird that we had seen taking off. Neither of us was comfortable to ID our bird as a Wilson’s Phalarope, so the mega-tick will have to wait another decade or two!!!!

The day was not a total loss as we saw a total of 85 birds including Northern Black Korhaan, Pink-billed Lark, Grey-backed Sparrowlark, Cape Longclaw, Cape Teal, Kittlitz’s Plover and Little Stint, all of which I managed to photograph. Everywhere we walked we flushed Quailfinch without ever getting any hint of their presence before they took to flight. Eventually my friend