Great garden birding
As a birder we pretty much always have our eyes peeled for birds. It is in us. And we cannot escape it. In the parking lot of the local grocery store, from my office window, and even while watching TV (heard a Willow Warbler in CSI Miami a few days ago). And besides when we actively choose to go somewhere to go birding, two places stand out as attracting a particularly large amount of my attention. The first is from my office window and between our various office buildings (Bonelli’s Warbler, Spotted Nutcracker, Black Redstart, Alpine Chough); and the second is from my balcony or through my lounge window at home (Alpine Swift, Crag Martin, Wallcreeper!).
A few years ago, I was back in South Africa and we visited St Lucia, a cute little town on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast set within tropical forest and wedged in by a great big estuary and the Indian Ocean. Hippos and Leopards roam the streets at night. Wonderfully bizarre.
We had rented a small apartment with what has got to be just about the best garden birding I have ever come across. Getting up at dawn, we had wonderful views over the forest out to the sun rising above the ocean. What more could one want. Oh ya, birds. And there were tons of those too.
This one wonderful garden produced some really nice birding. What more could one ask for: a great view, fruiting figs, flowering Erythrinas, and hornbills, turacos and sunbirds up close.
All bird photos taken with a Swarovski telescope, UCA Adapter and a Canon 1000D.
Absolutely gorgeous photos but I am surprised that you didn’t see any hummingbirds in St.Lucia.
Hi Ruth,
Hummingbirds are only found in the Americas and there are three species of hummingbird that occur on the Caribbean island of St Lucia.
The town of St Lucia is on the northeast coast of South Africa where there are similar – but unrelated – birds called sunbirds. The sunbirds also feed on nectar, but dont hover while feeding (as the hummingbirds do), but rather perch and slide their really long bills in to the flowers to gather the nectar. Sunbirds are also expert hawkers of insects, catching them in mid-flight.
Happy birding,
Dale
Awesome post Dale… my favorite type of bird-photo spot!
Shared in Bird-Photography group, in LinkedIn!
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/BirdPhotography-4124841?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
Bit late finding this, but some fantastic photos – I’m looking forward to seeing similar ones next month, especially the Sunbirds & the vaguely similar (to the Livingstone’s) Purple-crested Lourie (Turaco) in my folks garden back home in Zimbabwe