kmatthew

Visited South Africa at the beginning of the August. Will like to thanks Captain Wong for initiating the trip and also Ah Yuen for the great company through our journey to Kruger and Blyde River Canyon. South Africa is well worth visiting for those who want to get a taste of Africa for the first time, it's also a much more budget friendly country to visit compare with Kenya or Tanzania. South Africa offers quite a lot of endemic species and even a few endemic families. Our timing was not the best for birds, but we still had quite a few interesting and target species. We managed to get the BIG FIVE at Kruger, even the Leopard!

We only hired a guide for our short stay at Cape Town, Brian Vanderwalt was extremely helpful and very experienced local bird guide, I highly recommend spending a day or two with him at Cape Town. He found us both Blue Cranes and Cape Rockjumpers fairly easily. The rest of our trip was self driven, Kruger offers very good game watching even without any guiding, Blyde River Canyon is highly recommended for the amazing sceneries!

Will no doubt visit this unique corner of earth again in the near future. For full trip report and more photos, please visit the links below:

Trip Report:
Part 1 - Cape Town + False Bay
Part 2 - Cape Town + Johannesburg + Kruger (Crocodile Bridge)
Part 3 - Kruger (Crocodile Bridge + Satara)
Part 4 - Kruger (Satara + Letaba)
Part 5 - Kruger (Letaba) + J G Strijdomtunnel + Blyde River Canyon
Part 6 - Blyde River Canyon

Blue Crane - endemic (National Bird of South Africa)




Cape Sugarbird - endemic




Cape Rockjumper - endemic




Cape Grassbird - endemic


African Penguin - endemic




Cape Cormorant - endemic




Crowned Cormorant - endemic


Southern Bald Ibis - endemic


Orange-breasted Sunbird - endemic


Southern Double-collared Sunbird - endemic


Malachite Sunbird


Cape Batis - endemic




Spotted Eagle Owl


Giant Eagle Owl


African Scops Owl


Lilac-breasted Roller


Purple Roller


White-browed Robin-Chat


Crested Francolin


Swainson's Spurfowl


Kori Bustard


Red-crested Korhaan


Green Wood-Hoopoe


Golden-tailed Woodpecker


Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill


Southern Red-billed Hornbill


African Grey Hornbill


White-backed Vulture


Lappet-faced Vulture


Martial Eagle


Southern Masked Weaver


Cape Weaver


Cape Canary - endemic


Swee Waxbill - endemic




African Elephant


White Rhino


Blue Widebeest


Plain Zebra


African Buffalo


Hippo


Leopard


Lion


Giraffe


Blyde River Canyon - Three Rondavels


[ Last edited by kmatthew at 29/08/2016 09:49 ]

9Wi

Great and excellent shots.

hkwongkit

One of the best trip reports I've seen posted here for a long while.
Superb photography you'd done and I enjoyed reading your well written blogs on this trip too.
Well done and thanks for sharing, Matt!

kmatthew

Thanks 9Wi and KK, I really think SA deserves more attention from HK birders, even a casual trip like ours yielded some pretty good birds, while our itinerary also managed to cater for a lot of non-birding friends on our trip. It's also one of the best value birding location I've ever been on for the amount of birds and animals the country can deliver.

wcaptain

與有榮焉 My pleasure to travel with young stars

BTW, Southern Ground Hornbill (Bird of the trip)

Yuen_Wasp

與有榮焉 My pleasure to travel with senior birders~thanks Captain and Matthew

BTW~
Trumpeter Hornbill


Common Ostrich

kmatthew

Great shots of the 3 species I missed!!!