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From Cape Town we drove via Lambert's Bay and Calvinia to Brandvlei, a small, sleepy town in the middle of Bushmanland.
From here we took several drives along dirt roads to find desert bird like Ludwig's
and Karoo Bustard, Grey Tit, Karoo Penduline Tit, Yellow-vented
Eremomela, Dusky Sunbird. The landscape around Brandvlei is wide and
flat, endless plains dotted by scrub or grass tufts and no trees except the
arboreal Aloe species, and a few planted Eucalyptus near
farmhouses.
 Karoo Korhaan
Practically the whole Karoo is fenced as private farmland or
grazing grounds for cattle or sheep, so it's impossible to leave the roads and
venture into the promising plains. Menacing signs in Afrikaans hanging from
barbed wire fences promise terrible punishments for trespassers. Other birds we
saw included Namaqua Sandgrouse, Scaly-feathered Finch and numerous Social
Weaver nests along the road to Kenhardt.
Capped Wheatear
However, birding from the road was
productive enough to keep us busy, and the fences and wires provided perches
for Capped Wheatear, Karoo Long-billed Lark, and Sabota
Lark. We were lucky to see the endemic and highly localized Red Lark,
a male doing a display flight and finally perching on a wire. The most commonly
seen raptor was Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk, and I had the nice
surprise of seeing a Secretarybird on a cultivated field when driving
back towards Calvinia.
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| Namaqua Sandgrouse, male (right) and female |
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| Social Weaver |
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Social Weaver nest |
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| Social Weaver nests along the road |
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