Kruger Part 10 – Summary

11 November to 7 December 2018

Report by Sally and Paul Bartho

 

The intention of this summary is to:

• show you in one chart our birdlist for the entire Kruger and which birds we identified when based in each camp area.
• comment on the birds we thought we might see but didn’t.
• make comments on our time in the Park.
• show you photos of the birds we could not identify.
• show you photos of what we considered “Special” birds.
• show you photos of animals we took.
• show you photos which we considered to be of reasonable quality.

Despite the dryness of the Park we still identified a wide variety of birds in all 230 different species. Click here to see the total list of birds we identified in our stay in the Kruger also showing a summary of the birds we saw in the area of each camp.

Having said that, we were surprised not to identify any of the following:

• Bishops*
• Buzzards
• Coots*
• Falcons
• Grebes Little*
• Kestrels
• Longclaws
• Mannikins
• Martins
• Moorhens*
• Pigeons Speckled
• Saw-wings Black
• Teals*
• Terns*
• Tinkerbirds
• Weavers Village
• White-eyes

* We attributed these particular missing birds due to the dryness of the Park.

Some Comments and Observations:

• Our favourite camps were Lower Sabie in the South, Balule in the middle, Tsendze and Punda Maria in the north. And Malelane in the south as a gateway for both entering and leaving the Park.
• Yellow-billed Oxpeckers have thrived in the north and now it is unusual to see a Red-billed Oxpecker on Giraffe or Buffalo.
• Yellow-billed Oxpeckers have extended their range and it is not unusual to find them lower down at Tsendze.
• It is about time that Punda Maria management bought a washing machine for their laundry.
• The Deck at Lower Sabie gave us many interesting sightings not only of birds but interacting animals too.
• The swimming pool at Shingwedzi was a real life saver.
• Crocodile Bridge area looked like a desert – trees all knocked down, barren and dusty sadly

Unidentified Birds:

Of the birds we photographed there were two which we could not identify. Perhaps you can?? And there is one snake for ID please.

Special Birds:

The following photos are of birds that we considered to be special – either because they are hard to find or they are not birds we regularly see where we live or they show something about the bird..

Some Animals

Other birds we can’t forget:

And that’s it Folks. We hope you have enjoyed the series.

Paul and Sally Bartho