Atlasville – 28 Apr 2008

Paid a visit to the Marievale Bird Sanctuary to see if there were still any migrant stragglers around. Found a single Common Ringed Plover and three Little Stint already in breeding plumage that seemed to be all that remained of the large numbers of summer migrants seen there over our southern hemisphere summer months.

Much of the activity at Marievale on this Freedom Day holiday seemed to be in the air, with hundreds of Spurwinged Geese flying in anything from tight V-formations to unusually unco-ordinated masses. Reed and White-breasted Cormorant (now regarded as a sub-species of Great Cormorant), African Sacred Ibis, Hadeda Ibis, African Spoonbill, Purple Heron, Cape Shoveler, Yellow-billed Duck and Red-billed Teal were all quite active.

A pair of South African Shelduck gave me only my second sighting of this species in almost a decade of birding at Marievale, and a single Black Heron put in an appearance. Always good to see this one. The ubiquitous Red-knobbed Coot was almost everywhere you looked.

Photo of the day though was not a bird, not a mammal, not even an insect. It was this leaping Common Carp.