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