The birds of Settlers Park

In Settlers Park. Luke, around the age of 8, with Doug, 6, playing a supporting role.

This was published in the Herald in January 2000, under the headline “Abundant birdlife in the heart of PE’s green lung”.

WHEN I wrote a piece in the Herald five months ago about discovering the delights of bird-watching, I never imagined the positive reaction it would receive.

Colleagues at work, the principal of my younger son’s pre-primary school, friends, relatives and acquaintances – all had a tale to tell about their own sightings or tips to assist us in our quest to find new lifers – birds seen and identified for the first time.

But the most enthusiastic response came from the Eastern Cape Wild Bird Society (now BirdLife Eastern Cape), which invited my son and mentor, Luke (8), to an introduction to birds at the Newton Park library, followed by a Saturday morning bird-spotting walk through Settlers Park. Led by Ken and Jen Munro, we were given “inside information” that has proved invaluable. Since then, Luke’s knowledge of birds has grown considerably.

A quiet corner of Settlers Park where many birding surprises occur. Shame about the tower.

The black-headed oriole, Cape robin, fork-tailed drongo, sombre bulbul, olive thrush and many more have become fairly old hat – though we still follow their calls to make sure we see them.

And of course the Knysna lourie never fails to impress.

But it was only recently that I fully came to appreciate the rich diversity which Settlers Park has to offer the bird-watcher.

Little egret

A while ago, Luke, his brother Douglas (6) and I had ventured through the park to a section of the Baakens River at the park’s seaward end where a fairly open expanse of water can be seen through a curtain of reeds. Luke and I spotted a graceful egret perched on a branch a couple of metres above the surface. We were trying to establish the exact type from its feet when Douglas piped up: “How can you see the feet when they’re in the water?”

We laughed, until we noticed that Douglas was looking at another bird, standing in the shallows just below the egret. It was an Egyptian goose, which then set off down the river.

The egret flew a few metres to the other bank, its yellow feet confirming its identity: a little egret (though I thought it quite large).

Dabchick

In the distance we also spotted a tiny, short-tailed duck, which the boys – fresh from a visit to Swartvlei near Sedgefield – confirmed was a dabchick (little grebe).

Anyway, a couple of weeks later we were back at the same spot – elated after a delightful five-minute sighting on the countour path of a Knysna lourie tucking into some berries about six metres away from us.

Giant kingfisher

But this time the little section of river was devoid of birdlife. As we turned to leave, we heard a few sharp calls, which Luke said sounded like a helmeted guineafowl. We turned around in time to see a large bird with black and white spots, its wings outstretched, land on the same outjutting branch above the water’s edge.

“No,” I said to Luke as I spied the thick, straight black bill, “that’s no guineafowl. It looks like a pied kingfisher (which I had first seen a month earlier in the George area).”

“It’s too big,” came the reply. “It’s a giant kingfisher.”

“A what?” That was one I’d not heard of, but Luke opened his Sasol Birds of Southern Africa and there it was. This great big fowl of a bird (38cm to 43cm) then took to its wings and sped off down the river.

As we headed back up-river, I remarked that it would be great to see a red bishop in the Settlers Park reeds, among the many weavers.

But, it would seem, these oddly shaped, almost luminous red birds prefer more secluded surroundings.

We had first spotted them – at least half a dozen – on a walk along the Baakens River between the Third Avenue Dip and Dodds Farm. They are apparently summer visitors – like the plethora of greater striped swallows and white-rumped swifts we have been seeing of late, wheeling and swirling through the sky.

Anyway, with the giant kingfisher “on record”, I told Luke it would make my day if I saw a woodpecker. We set off down a tree-overhung path along the edge of the river when a bird with a darkish back shot up-stream ahead of us, a few metres above the surface. I was convinced it was a kingfisher, but the sighting was too brief to be sure.

A glimmering malachite sunbird on a strelitzia in Settlers Park.

A few metres down the path we stopped – and Luke thought the tapping he was hearing was me hitting the stick I was carrying against my shoe. Confirming it was coming from up a nearby tree, he soon located an olive woodpecker, its bright red crown visible as it tucked into a feast of creepy-crawlies, oblivious to our presence.

Malachite kingfisher

We set off again. Then, alerted by a sudden movement, I turned quickly to see what had to be a malachite kingfisher flying back down the river. Luke missed it, so we backtracked, but there was no sign of it.

When we returned to the spot where I had seen it, there it was again, a few metres away, a tiny silver fish in its beak.

It was indeed a malachite kingfisher. Bright blue and orange, with a disproportionately large orange bill, this tiny fellow – about 14cm long – moved from one reed to the next in search of brunch.

Paradise flycatcher

As an added bonus, we saw a male and female paradise flycatcher merrily dancing about above the river, doing what comes naturally: catching insects! Luke also got a lifer – his first sighting of a collared sunbird.

Collared sunbird

Sunbirds there are aplenty in Settlers Park, with the greater- and lesser-double-collared and African black varieties being fairly easily spotted, particularly in the winter.

But when a tiny, short-billed bird darted overhead making a staccato chit-chit-chit sound, I was at a loss as to its identity. Smaller than a Cape white-eye, with much brighter plumage, the bird kept returning to the same spot with something in its beak. We discovered it was taking food to a rather scruffy nest.

But it moved at such speed, and so furtively, it took several journeys to and fro before Luke confirmed his suspicion that it was a collared sunbird, all 10cm of it.

Neddicky

Along with the delightful swee waxbill (9-10cm) and neddicky (small cisticola) which is 11cm, it was one of the smallest birds we’d seen in the wild.

In two hours that Saturday morning we spotted about 30 different species, not to mention some – like the bar-throated apalis – which we only heard.

The park boasts over 100 of South Africa’s approximately 900 bird species. Not bad for a small green lung in the heart of a major city.

Long may it survive.