Atlasville, 30 June 2007

Paid a visit today to the Northern Farms just outside suburban Johannesburg, where the arrival of a male Northern Pintail in breeding plumage is causing quite a stir. Is it an escapee from captivity or a true reverse migrant hopelessly lost and well out of its normal distribution range?

I haven’t got the answer to that one, but it makes for an attractive photograph. It was easily found, given the number of spotting scopes and cameras trained on it! It associates with a pair of Red-crested Pochard that are known escapees and have been resident on the farm dams for several years. No doubt the South African Rarities Committee will decide its status in due course.

Apart from the two ducks there was a lot of activity in the middle of the dam with flocks of Egyptian Goose circling and then coming in for very ungainly landings on the water close to a flock of Grey-headed Gull bobbing serenely on the water, who reacted rather angrily to any newcomers.

Around the fringes of the dam, unperturbed by the squabbling and squawking not too far off were Red-knobbed Coot tending to their young and Little Grebe, both adult and immature birds.