Haka Park, October 5th

The BirdLife Zimbabwe walk on Saturday the 5th October 2013 was at Haka Game Park. There was a rather large group of us, around 25 people. This meant lots of little birding groups, and a fairly high combined species count (although I can't remember the number - it's been a while!). Highlights were African Snipe, Black-chested Snake-eagle, Striped Kingfisher, European Honey-buzzard and probably a few others that I've forgotten about...

Panoramic view of Cleveland Dam.

Low flyover of a Black-chested Snake-eagle

Common Moorhen with recently hatched chicks

Groundscraper Thrush

European Honey-buzzard. Not a good photo, but an unusual bird.

Zebra foal

Striped Kingfisher

Yellow-fronted Tinkerbird

Many of my blog posts feature some sort of non-bird type critter that I've found, and this one is no different:

Latrodectus geometricus (Brown Widow). Don't get bitten! Related to the Black Widow, and the Redback Spider of Australia.

Flap-necked Chameleon. This guy was crossing the road, so I turned around save him.  The lady walking past at the time was not impressed when I suddenly jumped out of the car and scooped up a chameleon right next to her!

Male Southern Tree Agama, without the bright blue head colouration

Best of all was a Brown House Snake (Lamprophis fuliginosus) rescued from a busy road by a friend of mine. He gave it to me to photograph before releasing it. The snake was very calm and hardly seemed to mind being handled. It was a most lovely snake.

Snake photography is rather difficult, I discovered

To give you an idea of size