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South Africa Cape area (1 Viewer)

tringbirds

Well-known member
We shall be in Cape Town for 13 days next Jan 2015 and hoping to take a pelagic trip plus some area birding. Has anyone got any recommendations regarding companies to use and or has a suitable itinerary for birding the Cape . Thanking you in advance for any advice and information.
 
We shall be in Cape Town for 13 days next Jan 2015 and hoping to take a pelagic trip plus some area birding. Has anyone got any recommendations regarding companies to use and or has a suitable itinerary for birding the Cape . Thanking you in advance for any advice and information.

Hi Tringbirds,

This is the Company based at Simons town, Cape Town http://www.capetownpelagics.com/cape_pelagics_calendar.htm, they only have the dates up until December 2014 but if you contact them they should be able to advise. My trip (July 2013) was cancelled due to high winds, you should have a bit more luck in January....

Regarding birding the Cape town area if you browse through post from August and September on my blog http://bfbsoutdoorramblings.blogspot.co.uk/ I have a number of post with info regarding, Strandfontain Sewage works, Rondabosch, Kirsetnbosch, Phillipi, Kynsna and De Hoop NR.

Also look at the South African thread here on Birdforum for good info and chat.

PM me if you need any finer detail info etc

Dave
 
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If you don't already have it, the Southern African Birdfinder book is a must. It has excellent details for many sites in the Cape Town area. There is also Trevor Hardaker's South Africa rare bird website, which is well worth checking while you're there. eg we were lucky enough to be able to twitch a Rockhopper Penguin near Cape Town in Feb.

Have a good'un :t:
 
Just preparing for a 21 trip in the Western Cape myself Tring, leaving in 9 days time. Woohoo.. haven't been back (first "home") in 26 years so am very excited.

I'll do a full trip report when I get back and send you a link.
 
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There are 3 pelagic trip operators in Cape Town - Cape Town Pelagics, Anne Albatross pelagics and Zest for Birds.

I am personally involved with the latter, so perhaps my comments will be a little biased. Nevertheless, I doubt any of the operators will have schedules extending into 2015 already. All of them will currently only show trips up until the end of 2014 for now.

The 3 operators work slightly differently. The first 2 use small game fishing vessels for their trips (about 35-40ft vessels) where they take 7 or 8 passengers and 1 guide on the trip. We, as in Zest for Birds, operate slightly differently in that we use a larger vessel (66ft vessel) and take a maximum of 12 passengers with 3 or 4 guides on board. Because of our larger vessel, we suffer less from cancellations due to weather and sea conditions as our boat can easily handle slightly rougher weather (although we also aren't stupid and don't go out when conditions are not safe). If one is susceptible to seasickness, a larger and more stable vessel might also be slightly better. The only downside is that it is slightly slower than the small game fishing vessels.

Anyway, whichever operator you decide to go with, I cannot recommend a pelagic trip out of Cape Town highly enough. I recently hosted Hadoram Shirahai, one of the world's top seabird experts, on one of our trips and, at the end, he said it was the best one day pelagic trip he had ever done in the world...! Quite a nice thing to hear about pelagic birding in the Cape from someone of his calibre...!

I do post short reports and photos of most of our trips on my blog, so if you are interested in having a look, please pop through to http://hardakerwildlife.wordpress.com/. You'll have to wade through some of the other non-pelagic posts to find the reports, but maybe you'll find something else of interest in there anyway...

Enjoy the planning!

Kind regards
Trevor
 
Hi everybody
There is lots of interesting and very useful advice here for which I am extremely grateful. I have now got a rough outline of what we are going to do,much based on info provided above, and now cannot wait to get started.
Thank you once again for some really useful advice.
 
We went for a 2 week trip in 2009. Search my blog for 2009. Great trip & some amazing birds.

http://wirralbirders.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/back-to-reality.html

Very impressive and now I can't wait!! Shark pics alarming!! Hope our boat is larger than yours!

Was born in Chester so interesting to see on your blog all the rarities over the years. My father had access to Mersey marshes off Ince banks but sadly I wasn't a birder then; what a shame!
cheers and thanks again
 
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