Recent Ringing and Birding

I have been quite busy in the last couple of weeks, with a bunch of different birding trips thrown in the mix.

We have had three recent ringing trips - The first was a night-time attempt to catch Three-banded Plovers at Afdis (A success, with 9 TB Plovers caught, 3 of which were re-traps). Also caught was a Kurrichane Thrush, two Laughing Doves and a bat - which is still being identified.

The unidentified bat caught at Afdis. Photo by Erin Murphy

Next was Monavale Vlei, which was not particularly lucrative, and neither was the more recent trip to Mukuvisi Woodland, in attempt to catch some miombo woodland birds. The highlight of the Mukuvisi trip was in fact a Bronze-winged Courser on the dirt road at 5am! I also had a great sighting of a duiker later on in the day.

Mist nets billowing in the wind at Monavale Vlei.

Common Duiker at Mukuvisi.

Other recent birding has been at Haka Park, Domboshava and Borrowdale Brooke.
Haka Park was nice as usual, although we didn't see a great variety of birds. White-throated Robin-chat, Spotted Creeper, Miombo & Southern Black Tits, Swallow-tailed Bee-eater, Malachite Kingfisher and Klaas's Cuckoo were the highlights of the morning at Haka.

I went walking around Domboshava for an afternoon with my dad, where I saw Striped Pipit, Lazy Cisticola, Mocking Cliff-chat, Rock Martin and Cinnamon-breasted Bunting, among other species.

Cinnamon-breasted Bunting

Borrowdale Brooke has had a few unusual birds recently.
3 Three-banded Plovers have been hanging around the muddy edges of the dams recently. Sadly none of them are ringed! I have been making an effort to photograph the waterbirds; mainly coots, moorhens and jacanas and I am particularly pleased with my coot photograph.

Three-banded Plover

Red-knobbed Coot

My garden has seen a bit of action this week with Orange-breasted Bush-shrike and Green-backed Honeybird, both a first for the garden. A Spotted Eagle-owl has been standing on the lawn every night this week and a couple of Barn Owls have flown past.

Green-backed Honeybird

Haka Park, May 5th

We spent half the morning ringing birds in Haka park and decided to finish early, as we were not catching much. I did a quick drive through the woodlands to try photograph some birds. I hardly saw or heard a bird until I was about to give up, when I stumbled across a bird party containing Cardinal and Bennett's Woodpeckers, Black Cuckooshrike, Southern Hyliota, Stierling's Wren-warbler, Miombo and Southern Black Tits, Green-capped Eremomela, Yellow-throated Petronia and a lovely Spotted Creeper.

Cape and Yellow-throated Longclaws were on the main vlei near the bridge.

Male Bennett's Woodpecker

Miombo Tit

I was lucky to find this Spotted Creeper on a branch right in front of me!

Ringing at Afdis 28 April

One of the first catches of the morning was a Common Waxbill, which pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day. Blue and Common Waxbills, Bronze Mannikins and Jameson's Firefinches made up about half of the birds ringed during the day!
Some more exciting birds were caught, however. Two Black Crakes were caught in spring traps, along with two Bar-throated Apalises in the nets. There were still a few waders around - about 10 Three-banded Plovers (caught one), four Blacksmith Lapwings (caught one), 25 African Wattled Lapwings and 3 Wood Sandpipers (caught one).

Three-banded Plover

Blacksmith Lapwing

Bar-throated Apalis

The other good catch was a young Dark-capped Yellow Warbler with strange primary moult.

Starting from the outer primary, working inwards: 3 old feathers, 1 pin, 1 half-emerged and 4 feathers successfully moulted.
The inner primary, instead of being in the same state as the four on its right, is also half-emerged.
It would be interesting to have caught it a week later, to see the changes...