I'm back with life tick and tick bites . . . . (1 Viewer)

Imagine this . . . . crisp, cold, scarf-and-glove morning;tendrils of white mist rising from the shimmering water along the margins of the dam; tall red-brown grasses limned with the pink gold of a slowly-rising sun; steaming cups of fragrant tea competing with busy binoculars for cold fingers as we sit on the hillside facing a panoramic view of the dam, the grasslands dotted with flat-topped acacias and, in the distance, rows of blue hills rising to the magnificance of the Natal Drakensberg mountains etched sharply against the clear sky. A couple of orange-throated longclaws run here and there through the grass close to us, blue waxbills weet softly in a nearby thorn-tree, a Richards pipit stands on a rock surveying the start of another day and somewhere a scimitarbilled wood-hoopoe is calling, calling, calling . . . .
The tick - and the ticks - came later. The ticks came from the grass as I walked through it - they sit at the top and wait for some unsuspecting mammal to brush them off onto its body - in this case, mine. My lifer was a redthroated wryneck - how come I have never seen one before - such noisy birds! Not a huge list, but considering that the person I was with is not a birder, very
satisfying for me:
Red-billed wood hoopoe ; Scimitarbilled woodhoopoe
Orangethroated longclaw ; Yelloweyed canary
Stone chat ; Fiscal flycatcher
Black crow ; Pied crow
Arrowmarked babbler ; Black flycatcher
Chinspot batis ; Brubru
Forktailed drongo; Blue waxbill
Redthroated wryneck ; Bearded woodpecker
Cardinal woodpecker ; Blackshouldered kite
Pintailed whydah ; Groundscraper thrush
Greyheaded sparrow ; Southern black tit
Blackeyed bulbul ; Titbabbler
Goldentailed woodpecker ; Whitefronted cormorant
Darter ; Hadeda ibis
Cape turtle dove ; Pied kingfisher
Redcrested korhaan ; Natal francolin
Egyptian goose ; Laughing dove
Redfaced mousebird ; Blackcrowned tchagra
Whitebellied sunbird ; Cape glossy starling
African hoopoe ; Brownhooded kingfisher
Rock pigeon ; Masked weaver
Yellowthroated sparrow ; Speckled mousebird
Goldenbreasted bunting ; Crested barbet
Shelley’s francolin ; Greater doublecollared sunbird
Pied barbet ; Cape white-eye
Whitebrowed robin ; Southern boubou shrike
Spotted prinnia ; Swainson’s francolin
Tawnyflanked prinia ; Reed cormorant

In addition, we saw lots of giraffe, zebra, impala, blesbok, waterbuck, kudu, wildebeeste, eland, hartebeeste, reedbuck, a couple of jackal and six rhino! Not quite wildlife was the night I opened the curtain at the window of our hut and found a large white horse's backside pressed against the glass!! (There are horse rides in this reserve and they let the horses out at night to graze). Great weekend!

Sal, your killing me! I want to see all those creatures. I'll accept a tick bite or two.

dennis

No kidding!! What an incredible weekend!! I'll happily apply some DEET in order to see things as fabulous as this!!!

And what could you possibly mean by "not a huge list"?????

Wow!

Oh Sal... I am GREEN with envy!!!!

Fantastic List!

Dennis, yes, I'll put up with the ticks for that, but they can be such a pain. they are tiny - like a speck of dust, so very difficult to see (they are called pepper ticks for this reason - like having a pepper pot gently shaken on to you!) and they crawl all along the lines of your clothing where it fits tightly - so for example you may get bites all around your waist and where your underclothes fit. I've known someone get 152 bites in two days.
They itch like mad, and the worst thing is that you can get tick-bite fever from them - not so funny. They are incredibly difficult to dislodge too and can stay for days!
Beverley - I forgot to take it - well, I didn't think I'd need it this late in the year.
Sylvia - Unfortunately I am a very amateur birder. There are such a lot of larks, warblers and so on that I can't identify or that I would need lots of time to identify. I think a good birder might have got closer to a hundred birds in this time at Spioenkop (there are about nine hundred bird species in South Africa) and I just wish that I could have done this too! But it was such a great weekend that I don't really mind!

Sal,

What a wonderfully evocative scene-setter - I can even imagine what the tea tasted like! Lovely set of birds you've got there and what a good lifer. We've tried for the Red-throated Wryneck in Kenya but have never managed to see one.

Helen

You've painted a wonderful sight in my mind Sal and I would not call that a small list by any measure. Having had my last tick surgically removed, I can commiserate with you on that subject.
Congratulations on your tick.

A very nice report Sal and I think that plenty of us would have bene perfectly happy with seeing that many exotic species in just a weekend.

Not so sure about the ticks though ???

Thanks Birdman, Helen, KC and Ian. I have been looking for the redthroated wryneck for years, I just can't believe that two of them flew into the tree next to me and started calling. Not only that but they were thoughtful enough to come back on each of the next two days. KC that must have been some tick! I mentioned in my list groundscraper thrushes but what I forgot to say was that one of them was an albino bird. Initially I could not think what it was - pure white with the faintest pale brown dashes on its breast. It was the beak and its behaviour that finally gave it away and when I saw it again the next day with two other normal groundscrapers I was sure.

Greetings Sal:
I can read that you had a very succesfull outing with a none birder friend, your list is great also the other animals are a beauty to behold.
Ticks, as a kid living in South America, Dutch Guiana (Suriname) was my annual summer problem, but being an Army Bratt, we did not go to get surgery, we removed them ourself.
I am living in North Western Canada for the last 46 years and dont miss all the tropical misseries, but I do miss the tropical wild life animals with there colors we dont see here up North.
Last Sunday we went to see a tropical display of various parrots and macaws, seems as they smelled my tropical skin and walked right up my finger and unto my shoulder and would not go back to there owners, my wife was delighted as said, "how nice to see the tropics meet up North in Canada" she is from Amsterdam Holland. my girlfriend, partner, wife and companion for the last 47 years and a great mother..
cheers
Walther
www.walther-loff.com

Hi Walther, yes it was a really great outing. You mention missing all the tropical colours - funny because I was thinking this morning what a lot of colour my bird list contains - yellow, red, orange, grey, golden, white, black, blue! We are so lucky to have such a colourful collection. I'm not really surprised that the parrots and macaws seemed to sense your tropical links. I know that when I was overseas and came across animals from Africa I felt an intense yearning to be home and I'm sure that they can sense this. How wonderful that you and your wife have been together for 47 years, I can guess that you have a close family.

Hi Sal,

Sounds just fabulous, and my impatience to be there is palpable! Eight weeks to go! Where did you see the Orange-throated longclaw? And giraffes too, how exciting!

Cheers,

Hi Simon
Orangethroated longclaw - in the grassland area on the gamedrive. I will try and scan a small road map of the reserve and mark it for you. Eight weeks! They will go by in a flash!

Hi Sal, Your report is "food for the soul", a wonderful list of birds and animals. As for the ticks....you got me scratching! I remember my days in the US Marine Corps and the "jiggers", miniscule ticks that get under your skin and torment the hell out of you. Our remedy was an application of clear nail polish to "cut off the air supply", not sure if it worked but it gave relief from the itching.
Waiting for your next report!

oh Africa! How I would love to go. I'll have a look at my SASOL guide when I get home to put some names to faces so to speak.

Just how noisy are Hadedas? One of my absolute favourite writers, André Brink, often mentions them in his novels.

E

Hey Screech that's amazing - I lived in Kenya and there were jiggers there. I can remember as a child sitting on the kitchen table, having the skin on my toe peeled back layer by layer with a pin by a Kenyan who eventually got to the egg case and lifted it out intact - and I barely felt it, he was so careful! We didn't know about nail varnish!
Edward - Hadedas are incredibly noisy. They fly in before dawn, sit on the ridgepole of your house or in a tree next to it and caw raucously for five minutes or so. Impossible to sleep through! At work, every evening, five of them come to the water feature outside my office window for a drink. Then they fly up onto the roof and sit there, all facing the same way, like bronzed weather- cocks. Andre Brink is a great writer, I, too have several of his books.