Atlasville – 25 Oct 2008
Three more weeks completed at our field camp, which is now almost nearing completion with the thatched roof over the kitchen/dining area in the final stages. The onset of the rains has been threatening with daily cloud build-up and the odd rumble of thunder. The local farmers are waiting for that first downpour to get their summer mealie and cassava crops started.
With a trip list for the 3 weeks of 100 this has boosted my list of identified sightings (or calls) for the area immediately around the camp from 80 to 126. Notable additions to the list this time were Retz’s Helmetshrike, Long-tailed Cisticola, Common Whitethroat, Garden Warbler, Yellow-mantled Widowbird, Black-eared Seed-Eater, Green-backed Woodpecker, Collared Flycatcher, Yellow-bellied Hyliota, Wood Pipit and Red-capped Crombec.
My daily walks up the hill behind the camp into the miombo woodland for 45 minutes just post-dawn and again just before sunset are still turning up the odd surprise, even though I can now predict with a >80% certainty what birds I will see where – almost to the tree! One evening, almost at the top of the hill, in a very rocky clearing in the miombo I discovered two eggs lying among the gravel and pebbles. This could only be a nightjar’s nest, barely more than a shallow depression in the gravel. The following evening at the same time the bird was there sitting on the eggs. Field ID of nightjars is not too easy, but I believe that this was a female Fiery-necked Nightjar. The next evening one of the eggs had hatched, but on the fourth evening neither egg nor hatchling was there. I can only assume that in such an exposed spot they had finally succumbed to some natural predator such as a mongoose.
It was also a good trip for expanding my photographic record of the area, albeit with the Canon 20D, the 40D remaining at home. Added were Southern White-faced Owl, Lizard Buzzard, Coqui Francolin, Pale-billed Hornbill, Fiery-necked Nightjar, Schalow’s Turaco, Klaas’s Cuckoo, African Hoopoe (now regarded as a sub-species of Eurasian Hoopoe), African Golden Oriole, Grey-headed Bushshrike, Black Cuckooshrike, White-breasted Cuckooshrike, Fork-tailed Drongo, Miombo Rock Thrush, Groundscraper Thrush, Miombo Scrub Robin, Yellow-throated Bush Sparrow, Familiar Chat, Western Miombo Sunbird, Golden-breasted Bunting and Cinnamon-breasted Bunting.
Other visitors inside the field camp perimeter were Tropical Spiny Agama and Flap-necked Chameleon, and no fewer than 9 different butterflies – African Common White, Two-pip Policeman , Thorn-tree Blue, Common Grass Yellow, Common Zebra Blue, Common Smoky Blue, Diadem, Natal Acraea and Common Glider. We also had the caterpillar of the Large Striped Hawk-moth and a still unidentified longhorn beetle. You will have to take my word for it that this creature in the top of the biggest tree inside the camp is a Silvery Greater Galago, cousin to the bushbabies.
