Tag: Cape Town

photography

Zambia and South Africa

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I am now posting photos from Zambia and all of South Africa. I know that these are from August and September and it is now February, but that is just procrastination at its most extreme. Anyway, here are the photos.

In Zambia we stayed at Bongwe Camp, where I saw this male Red-headed Weaver constructing its nest. You can see the tube-like entrance at the bottom and the wider main area near the bird.
This is a cropped image of my best photo of an African Finfoot, which we saw at Mosi-Oa Tunya National Park in Zambia. Finfoots are rare and secretive, so to see this one out in the open on a river is unique. You can see the orange bill and white stripe behind the eye.
In the national park there is a herd of Southern White Rhinos that are kept under constant supervision to guard against poaching. On our trip to the park we got to see the herd, which included this baby.
This is the mother rhino of the baby seen in the previous photo.
Near the end of our time in the park we got excellent views of this White-fronted Bee-eater, in my opinion one of the most beautiful birds in southern Africa.
At the beginning of our time in South Africa we stayed at Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre where we got to tour the enclosures. This is a picture of one of their leopards that we got to see.
Once in Kruger National Park in South Africa we began seeing lots of wildlife, including this Brown-headed Parrot, seen at one of the many camp areas.
In one of the larger herds of elephants there were several babies, including this one, who had not even started to grow tusks, indicating very young age.
This is a young bushbuck, also seen in the middle of camp in Kruger.
In Kruger we repeatedly found that the most friendly and least afraid bird we met was the Wire-tailed Swallow. This one we saw at a hide in the park where there was an active swallow nest.
On one of our most eventful drives we saw a family of African Wild Dogs, a pack with several pups, one of which is this one.
Almost immediately after seeing the wild dogs we came across a group of around four rhinos, completing the day.
At one hide in Kruger the water was dry and we saw no animals except for this squirrel, which we used to practice photography. This is one of my best photos from that session.
This is another photo of the same squirrel.
This is a male African Gray Hornbill also seen in Kruger National Park.
This Hamerkop (Afrikaans for “hammerhead” after the bird’s backward-pointing crest) is standing on a hippo. This was seen at the Krokodilrivier, the southern boundary of Kruger.
Also seen at the Krokodilrivier was this Pied Kingfisher. They are pretty common in the area, but this was my only chance to get a close-up picture of one.
In eSwatini we stayed at Hlane (pronounced like Shlanay) National Park, where we got to see a lot of rhinos and this African Hoopoe, here raising its fan-shaped crest.
South of eSwatini we stayed at the semi-legendary (among birders of southern africa) semi-unknown (among everybody else, including even our guide) Mkhuze Game Reserve, which at a area of 150 square miles boasts the second-largest bird list in the country, after Kruger (For comparison Kruger is over 7,000 square miles). Mkhuze has a list of over 450 bird species because of the incredible diversity of habitats packed into it: There’s a fig forest, sand forest, Acacia savannah, marshes, ponds, a river, and more. This Long-crested Eagle was one of the first birds we saw there.
At one of Mkhuze’s several hides overlooking a watering hole we witnessed this pair of Woolly-necked Storks preening each other and attending to each other’s needs. It was very impressive.
At the same watering hole we finally got really good views of the Hadada Ibis, characterized by its loud call, iridescent wing, and gray coloring.
As mentioned before, Mkhuze has a fig forest, and it is here that some of the rarer birds reside, including the Pel’s Fishing-owl, Green Malkoha, Blue-mantled Crested-flycatcher, and, shown above, the beautiful Narina Trogon. As you can see, it has an iridescent green back, but its belly is bright scarlet. It is very quiet and secretive, and for us it just flew down in front and perched.
This photograph shows an adult male African Paradise-flycatcher. The male paradise-flycatchers all have one remarkable, eye-catching characteristic: their incredibly long, graceful tail. When we were watching this male fly it seemed as if his tail would always tangle or hook on some branch, but it never did. The male, along with being beautiful, was either extremely lucky, or extremely skilled.
Mkhuze also has hides on the river, where there is an abundance of wildlife, including this Malachite Kingfisher, one of the most beautiful birds in Africa.
At the same hide we also managed to see this African Jaçana using its extremely elongated toes to walk on lily pads without sinking.
Another of Mkhuze’s star birds is the Purple-crested Turaco, whose red and black wing feathers are actually the crown of the king of eSwatini. We saw two drinking at a bird bath.
Mkhuze is not just birds; we saw this unidentified mouse near our camp.
After leaving Mkhuze we had lunch at the beautiful Shayamoya Tiger Fishing and Game Lodge, where we got great views of this herd of Crested Guineafowl, one of the weirdest of the area’s specialties.
While eating at the lodge, this Eastern Nicator flew up to near the deck and perched. Nicators are generally very skulky and shy, so to see one in the comparative open was new.
At the White Elephant Safari Lodge near Mkhuze we saw this jackrabbit feeding on the lawn.
This is a Crowned Eagle. Adults have been known to kill children up to 12 years old, but this was a young bird, so it didn’t attack us.
Rose-ringed Parakeets are native to India, but since we were spending a night in Johannesburg where there is a feral population we still managed to see them.
Our house in Cape Town has a very nice Protea garden, which attracted this Southern Double-collared Sunbird.
Seen at the penguin area, this Blacksmith Lapwing chick was extremely cute.
This is a half-grown African Penguin chick. We called all the chicks “Bob Rosses” because of their fluffy plumage.
One of Cedar’s favorite African animals was this dassie or Rock Hyrax. This is a younger one.
This is a picture of a dassie scratching (Cedar is making me put two more dassie pictures in this post, so prepare yourself for more adorable cute, chubby, mammals).
This is a family of dassies, with a baby at the bottom.
This is an African Penguin shaking itself off.
African Penguins are actually classified as globally endangered, so it was kind of amazing to get this close for free.
One of the many endemic bird species of the Protea ecosystem is this Malachite Sunbird, only found in the Cape area.
During our trip to Cape Point we actually managed to see several whales spout and swim near the shore.
Our Cape Town house came with a dry pool, and this mouse managed to get stuck inside it. We used a broom to create a ladder for it to get out.
One of our neighbors was a birder and had bird feeders all around their backyard. We got to walk around it and saw this Speckled Mousebird eating an apple.
Seen in the same backyard, this is a Cape Sugarbird, one of two birds in its family, and endemic to the Cape Town area.
When we went to the Cape Town Botanic Gardens we saw this classic example of the Cape ecosystem. Here you see and adult male Cape Sugarbird, (with pollen on its forehead) sitting on top of a King Protea, one the most iconic plants of the region.
This is the last dassie photo, taken on Table Mountain, engaging in what Cedar calls “his little glare of happiness”.
Also seen on Table Mountain, this is an Orange-breasted Sunbird, another endemic, and one of the most colorful sunbirds (that’s saying a lot) in the region.
poetry

fog sound bank

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fog sound bank

in the plush pale grey of fog
our lashes go spangled
each footstep sounds
a loud crunch in
the small space of here

a grassbird call resounds
cliff to cliff and back
its volume startles

on the summit
sound pops from all quarters
(frogs we can’t see and don’t expect
utterly untroubled by liquid air)

a dassie slowly saws stems
and we register each chew
even so I can’t make out
a sunbird’s sips
now and then wind demands attention
ruffles our hair
and blows on our earlobes:
are you all here? now?

poetry

Service

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Service

in the neat white houses
someone is making nectar
for the sugar birds
someone is hacking at packed sand
slowly shifting it to garden
someone is out patrolling in the night
waving a flashlight into worried windows
dispensing peace of mind

in the neat white houses
black men and women
are doing their work
of making the country run

poetry

Dias Beach Absolution

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Dias Beach Absolution

upon rounding sharp cliffs
after the men voted no confidence
and the final three days the crew allowed
before their bellies would mutiny
(a pathetically short extension
to reach a hopelessly faraway shore)
had elapsed with no end of Africa in sight
after he halted and buried
he dreams of Indian spices
at Kwaaihoek on the eastern Cape
the unused padrões lay heavy in the hold
and the threat of returning
to the mindless minding of Lisbon’s warehouses
grew more terrifying with each league
of aquamarine the São Cristóvão sliced through
he saw this crescent of inviting beach
and he fell upon it

I forgive you,
Bartolomeu,
for wanting to sink your ankles
in fine white sand
for wishing to slake your salty thirst
with waterfall
for wanting to warm yourself
by a blaze fed by armloads of driftwood
for nestling your body
into the yielding dunes
that molded themselves to your hips
for soiling this land with your unwanted presence

before the Khoikhoi hurled rocks in righteous anger
before the Cabo das Tormentas
seized your own heart and limbs
despite all the damage
your kind wrought
I forgive your need for one night
of slowly spinning stars

poetry

in-humanity

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in-humanity

things that can be taken away:
your family
your clothing
your bed
your blankets
your food
your books
your name
your dignity

what then remains?
sometimes
your will to resist
your sense of self
your purpose
your words
your unspoken name
your hunger for justice
your resolve to forgive

poetry

losing the sea

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losing the sea

today I couldn’t recall
amphipod
sat silent
while my children said
little shrimp
rolled that springy bugger around
in the back of my brain
all afternoon
without a name surfacing

only at night
by the artificial blue glow
searching little shrimp
does it come to me
in zeroes and ones:
amphipod
different foot
it’s been so long since I had sea legs
I’ve lost this basic building block
of 9000 species
all over our watery planet
ubiquitous
fundamental
shameful not to know

my children aren’t familiar with ocean
they take nothing for granted
have to root around for words
(they don’t have breakers swell spray strand dulse urchin anemone holdfast)
they say:
the waves are in white lines like dissolving sugar
like drifts of snow
making do with similes
for what they don’t yet know