[Sal]

Hi everyone. Have been away for a while so I feel like a stranger creeping into this forum! Have just spent four days in the Drakensberg mountains so here is my trip report. I did try to put in a couple of pics, which didn't work, thenm I tried to make it an attachment - which didn't work. Hence the delay. Sorry to those of you who opened this and found nothing!

A friend and I have just spent three nights in the Drakensberg mountains at Royal Natal National Park. Most of the Drakensberg area in KwaZulu Natal is under the control of the KZN Wildlife as the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park and is divided into various sections of which Royal Natal is one. We stayed at Thendele camp which looks out onto the magnificent Amphitheatre.

Our chalet was a little apart from the others, surrounded by low proteas, buddleias, tall seeding grasses and a few small yellowwoods and had a view right across the entire Amphitheatre from the Eastern buttress to the Sentinel peak at the Western end. Approximately two hundred species of birds have been recorded in the park, several of which are rare visitors. Although my friend is not a birder I managed to incorporate a bit of birding here and there!

We arrived on Saturday 10 Jan 2004 and were greeted in the car park outside the office by a flock of SPECKLED MOUSEBIRDS, some HADEDAS, DARK-CAPPED BULBULS and several RED-WINGED STARLINGS. Later, sitting on the verandah drinking tea and overlooking our own private piece of protea savannah, we were visited by, amongst others, CAPE WHITE-EYES, CAPE WAGTAILS, FAMILIAR CHATS, GRASSBIRDS, FISCAL FLYCATCHERS and serenaded by a couple of CAPE
ROBIN-CHATS. To the right of the protea savannah there was a piece of untouched grassland and it was constantly visited by KAROO PRINIAS. Looking to see what was attracting them, I discovered that they were visiting a small nest built in a seedling buddleia only about one metre off the ground.

The buddleia was well surrounded by grasses so the nest was not clearly visible but a little later we saw two mongooses one of which walked across the grass just below it and one of which came up towards our chalet beside the patch of grassland. The two prinias were bringing food so there were obviously young in the nest and I am really surprised that they would build so low. They were
excellent parents, starting work before five in the morning and only finishing around seven in the evening. If those stuffed little babies survive, I hope they will be able to take off! Each time one of the parents flew in, it would perch in a bush, look carefully around then flit down to the nest. If the other one arrived before the first one had left, it would give a warning call and wait for its
mate to leave before delivering the next juicy morsel. We stayed outside with a bottle of wine and a lot of mozzies, until the last birds had left and the sun had gone, then went in to have lasagne and salad, followed by a jacuzzi. Yes folks, our chalet had a jacuzzi! Don’t ask me why, I have never come across such a thing in Parks Board accommodation before.

The next day we got up early to a peach and golden sunrise and discovered that we had forgotten the butter. Mashed avocado seemed to make a good substitute and went well with ham and Camembert in our rolls. Stuffing them into our rucksacs together with water and juice, we set off along a contour path across the flank of the mountain to a place called Tiger Falls. Again, the route was through protea grassland. Very wet protea grassland. (It had rained in the night). Not only wet, but very tall grasses. . . . In addition to the species already seen, we came across AFRICAN STONECHATS, TAWNY-FLANKED PRINIAS, NEDDICKYS, MALACHITE SUNBIRDS, GREATER DOUBLE-COLLARED SUNBIRDS, RED-COLLARED WIDOWBIRDS and COMMON WAXBILLS. The
sunbirds were feeding from the proteas and the rich oily glints of colour of bird on flower in the sun were stunning. Drenched and exhiliarated, we arrived at our destination. Here, the vegetation changed. The falls are tucked into a south-facing fold of the mountain and so there were forest trees and blessed shade. The mixed vegetation included Buddleia salviifolia, Podocarpus latifolius,
Cussonia spicata, Halleria lucida, Alsophila dregei and Myrica serrata. Oh, and quite a few Natal bottlebrush - Greyia sutherlandii - which is quite one of my favourite trees. Also lots of mosses and ferns and begonias. The falls were falling strongly enough to mist the air and there was a
rainbow near the base. Flitting amongst the trees were robin-chats and AFRICAN PARADISE-FLYCATCHERS and circling lazily overhead were a couple of JACKAL BUZZARDS. We spent quite a time here, watching the silver streams of endlessly changing water, photographing the flowers and trying to get artistic pictures of falls -with- rainbow. After a rather early lunch we set off back to the camp, the jackal buzzards were still wheeling high up above as we left but it was pretty hot by now and bird life was sparse, mainly prinias, neddickys and LAZY CISTICOLAS.

It was a relief to sit in the shade of the thickly thatched verandah back at the chalet, feet up, and drink long glasses of iced fruit juice. From where we sat we could see the stunning Thukela falls streaming down the vertical grey rock of the Amphitheatre. These falls drop some 614 metres in a horizontal distance of 284 metres and the vertical section that we could see was a drop of about
185 metres. They eventually stream into the Thukela gorge and are the start of the Thukela river which winds back towards us from the Amphitheatre. The afternoon became somnolent. The Karoo prinias were still busily feeding their nestlings and the red-winged starlings were whistling softlyand the Cape wagtail was pecking around our feet and a CHORISTER ROBIN-CHAT appeared from
nowhere with a worm and ate it, perched in the fork of one of the proteas. A cackling ‘ker-bek ker- bek’ announced the arrival of the HELMETED GUINEA FOWLS (after whom the camp is named -Thendele in Zulu) who rustled busily in the grass and SOUTHERN BOUBOUS did their double act between the bush beside us and the thick cluster of buddleias down the bank.

Something else was rustling up beside the chalet too. Our peaceful poses and closed eyes were all the encouragement this specimen of wildlife needed. Suddenly the afternoon silence was shattered by a shriek and a loud bark and we were eyeball to eyeball with a large alpha male baboon who had
sneaked into the living room and stolen all our bananas which he was stuffing into his mouth as he bounded out and up the bank behind the chalet! Thoroughly roused we made tea and, on coming outside again found , high above us against the whitish grey cloud that was beginning to accumulate,
a freckling of black dots. Through the binoculars they turned into a gliding mass of WHITE STORKS, wheeling and sliding down the winds, lifting again with a single lazy flap. I tried to count - there must have been at least eighty of them indulging in this aerial ballet slowly moving westwardsin great overflowing circles. It was magic to watch.

Later I walked through the buddleia scrub and the forest behind us and on the way I added BLACK-COLLARED BARBET, CAPE WEAVER, SOUTHERN MASKED WEAVER, SOUTHERN GREY- HEADED SPARROW, RED-EYED DOVE, COMMON FISCAL, AFRICAN DUSKY FLYCATCHER and FORK-TAILED DRONGO to my list. In the forest I found a RED-CHESTED CUCKOO which I had heard calling earlier. Where the path leaves the forest there is a wooden seat erected many years
ago by a family who love the Berg. I sat here for a while and watched what I could see of the sunset - mainly cloud, but now and then a finger of misty light stretched out from the west and illuminated part of the cliffs or the rolling green flanks of the little Berg and slowly the fingers withdrew and the light drained away from the world and I made my way over the tussocky grass back to the chalet and prawns grilled in garlic and lemon oil (No butter - remember?).

That night there were thunderstorms with magnificent flashes of lightening and by the next day the skies were clearing for our walk to the Cascades. Before leaving I did a quick recce outside and found a pair of OLIVE WOODPECKERS in a buddleia. I followed them up the track to a vacant chalet and to my surprise they perched on the windowsills and attacked the wooden window frames
with great determination. The frames did not seem to be rotten, but judging from the marks, they had tried this before!

The cascades are on the Mahai river which eventually joins the Thukela and if you cross the bridge and walk up the path on the far side of the river you come to an area where the water forms pools and cascades from wide rocky step to wide rocky step. We deliberately got there pretty early as this is a favourite place for holiday makers and we had the entire are to ourselves so we set up
camp on the far side of the river on a wide flat rock beneath a leaning yellow- wood and swam inthe cold mountain water and frolicked beneath the silver waterfalls and watched browny-grey dragon-fly nymphs crawling out of the water onto the browny-grey vertical rock and splitting open to reveal crumpled, shivery green blobs that gradually extended into bright, glistening ,lime-green
dragonflies that took off and danced over the shimmering water. When they had all gone we lay on the rocks and dried off whilst Cape wagtails fossicked along the edges of the little rills and red- winged starlings practised clear whistles across the noise of the waterfalls. A pair of African paradise fly-catchers flipped back and forth above me and Cape robin-chats sang from the thick
vegetation along the sides of the river.

Later, when we ate our avocado-spread rolls, the starlings came down to see if they dared run inand collect the crumbs and this is the first time that I was able to see clearly the grey head of themale. On our way back later, we saw masses of BARN SWALLOWS on the telephone line that runsup the hill to the camp, many of them moulting and with only one tail streamer or none at all and
messy-looking faces. There were also a large number of RED-COLLARED WIDOWS and PIN-TAILED WHYDAS perched in the grasses on the rocky hillside and whilst we were watching thema VERREAUX’S EAGLE soared overhead and then suddenly folded its wings and plummeted down behind the brow of the hill. We didn’t see it rise so it must have flown off in the opposite direction.
There must have been a bloom of insects in the air because further up the swallows were swooping and wheeling everywhere. We saw LESSER STRIPED SWALLOWS too, and masses of martins.Some were ROCK MARTINS and some were COMMON HOUSE- MARTINS. Joining them were the ever-present red-winged starlings so that the air was filled with chirrups and whistles and swishing
wings. As we got closer to the chalet we saw a male reed-buck walking along close to the cliff-face. He was clever because he waited till we stopped looking at him before melting into the thick vegetation clustered against the rocks and we didn’t see where he went in. The late afternoon was once again spent on the veranda watching our prinias and all the other visitors. A new one for the
list was a pair of GOLDEN-BREASTED BUNTINGS.

Since I seem to be whingeing about butter each day I will tell you that our menu for this last night was a braai (barbecue?) with salad and buttered baked potatoes. Instead we had potato wedges flavoured with a bit of everything that I had left. Pretty good actually. Who needs butter?

Our last morning in the park was spent down at the dam which is for fishing only. However there is a path around it and sometimes you can see kingfishers. We did see a BROWN-HOODED KINGFISHER but missed the giant kingfisher that was apparently there ten minutes earlier. Later a MALACHITE flashed past. There were also SOUTHERN RED BISHOP-BIRDS in the reeds and a BLACK-SHOULDERED KITE on the telephone wire. The reflections in the water were beautiful and trout circled lazily beneath the surface. On the water were LITTLE GREBES with funny stripey-faced babies and the trees were full of weavers including VILLAGE WEAVERS. The day became hot very quickly so we packed up and took to the road, seeing a CAPE GLOSSY STARLING, a LANNER FALCON and a couple of AMUR FALCONS on our way out.

My list stands at 52 species which I suppose is not very good out of 200 possibles, and I was sorry that I didn’t see any of the siskins,the sugar birds or the reaL rock-dwellers like the rock-thrushes but it was a wonderful relaxing weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Now, (sigh)
back to work . . . .

[Beverlybaynes]

Well, Sal, I'm sure waiting to hear about your trip! I'll keep checking back for it.

[Sal]

Sorry about that Beverly, I had such a frantic end to last year and have done very little posting so I guess I am out of practice!

[Beverlybaynes]

Sal, this trip report was certainly worth waiting for!

What a wonderful weekend you had, butter or no! I have no idea what 90% of the birds you saw even look like, but your descriptions of the landscape do fire my imagination! It sounds like it was a perfect weekend, in spite of the heat (which I read about in morning temps of 15F!).

An acquaintance is currently in South Africa; I have no idea of his itinerary. But I may have to share your report with him (if that's OK?) to see if he might have visited this area as well.

I hope you can post some pictures eventually. I'd love to SEE where you were and not just imagine it!

[Sal]

Beverly , here goes, hope this works:

I have added to this thread a pic of the view from our cottage looking over to the Amphitheatre. The largest peak is the Sentinel. You can see some of the protea and buddleia savannah in the foreground. Second, a pic looking up towards the chalet, showing the natural long grass and the small protea trees. The prinia nest is in this grass and the third pic shows the nest and the small buddleia to which it is attached. Then comes a pic of a helmeted guineafowl and finally another scenic pic - the Cascades. Hope this helps you to visualise the trip!

[Beverlybaynes]

It certainly does, Sal! Wow!!

I've actually seen Helmeted Guineafowl, oddly enough. A fellow a couple counties over, near one of the reservoirs where there is some good birding, must raise them. I've seen them working the gravel shoulders of of a county, out in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, and a looooong way from South Africa. Quite a sight to see in the Midwest!

[Nancy]

Sal, once again you have written a report that enables us to SEE and FEEL what you are writing about, this is a great talent. I look forward to your next one. It is a wonderful country with such a huge variety of wildlife, both birds and mammals. What about snakes, were there any of them about?

[Swift]

Cracking report WELL WORTH THE READ , hope you dont feel to "out of it",
Regards SWIFT

[Sal]

Thanks for the nice comments Beverley, Nancy and Swift. Nancy - we looked very carefully for snakes - I really would have liked to see one and there are quite a few in that region, but all our paths were snake-free! Swift having these comments has made me feel that I am back amongst friends, but I must say there is a huge collection of new names since I was last an active member!

[jdbirdman]

Bringing back so many memories of the Drakensberg Sal. I was lucky to get all of the specials including my so long awaited Lamergier It is worth a return trip and I am sure you will be back! nice report
regards
John

[Sal]

John, I am trying not to hate you . . . . Have yet to see one but one day . . . .