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.

Victoria Bay and Swartvlei

The caravan park and foreshore houses as seen from the railway line at Victoria Bay.

This was published in the Weekend Post's Leisure supplement on January 15, 2000.

VICTORIA Bay nestles between steep green hills like a cradled child.

It is a delightful little village with a caravan park geared for tourists wishing to get close to nature.

But it is also sufficiently developed to enable you to relax without having to rough it too much.

Having booked a caravan and site, we set off down the coast from Port Elizabeth at the start of the spring holidays.

Unlike on our trips to East London, where seemingly never-ending roadworks and potholes in the Ciskei make travelling arduous, the journey to George – also just more than 300km – was a breeze.

A pre-teen Luke, his binoculars ever-present, at the Storms River Bridge.

We stopped for lunch at the Storms River bridge and spotted a Knysna lourie in the magnificent yellowwoods nearby – a harbinger of further avian delights to come.

Passing through Plett, the ever-busy Knysna, Sedgefield and Wilderness, we finally turned left off the N2 about 8km before George.

The Tsitsikamma mountains that had graced our northern flank through much of the journey turned even more spectacular when they became the Outeniqua range and, as we meandered down towards Vic Bay, it was apparent that, like Storms River Mouth, those steep mountainous gradients continued right to the shoreline.

The one main difference is that at Vic Bay there is no river, only a pristine bay with a sandy beach a couple of hundred metres wide.

The caravan site is set above a row of guest houses and B&Bs, which front onto the ocean, with only a narrow road dividing them from the sea. A delightful little pier is ideal for lovers on a moonlit night.

As we entered the site I thought of the old Brookes Hill caravan park in Port Elizabeth, where generations of visitors woke to a panoramic view of Algoa Bay.

The view from this small site – it only takes a few dozen caravans and tents – was a sight for sore, city eyes. With waves pounding across the bay, we were bordered behind and to our right by a hill that soared steeply several hundred metres above us, covered in thick indigenous bush.

A similar hill on the east side makes the other half of the “V” forming the bay. A tunnel pierces the furthest rocky reaches of the eastern hill, and every so often the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe and other steam trains traverse this slope, their whistles sounding jubilantly ahead of plumes of dark smoke.

We met other family members at the site after booking two caravans, which were ready for occupation when we arrived around 4pm.

Having honed our bird-watching skills in Settlers Park, we were delighted to find the elusive Cape bulbul was a regular visitor to Vic Bay.

Cape rock thrush

Another joy was to tune in to the “conversation” which a male Cape rock thrush, sitting on one telephone pole, held with his female partner on an adjacent pole in front of our caravan.

Cape robin

Greater double-collared sunbirds, Cape white-eyes, Cape robins and southern boubous were in plentiful supply.

While the ablution facilities were by no means luxurious, they were adequate and – most importantly – had a seemingly endless supply of hot water. No one enjoyed this more than a group of surfers camping at the site, as they thawed out in the showers after many hours in the water.

For the three days we were there the wave was consistently good, which explains why Vic Bay is such a famous surfing spot.

With built-in braais and an unimpeded view of the ocean a stone’s throw away, we found ourselves cooking outdoors each evening, something even a light drizzle on the last night couldn’t spoil.

Regularly during our stay we caught sight of the rock-like forms of several southern right whales, secure in the protection provided by the bay.

What to do while there? Some of us opted to join the fairly large throng of bathers in the sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean as others whiled away their time in the pages of a book.

We took a lengthy walk along the railway line and through the tunnel, where we were rewarded with a view of the sprawling Wilderness coastline.

There were cormorants and darters aplenty at Swartvlei. These were seen from the bird hide.

As an outing, we back-tracked about 30km to Swartvlei, near Sedgefied, where a hide set in a wide reed bed affords one an ideal opportunity of seeing fairly rare birdlife. Indeed, as we walked along the boardwalk to the hide we spotted the majestic paradise flycatcher, with its long orange tail. We were to see the short-tailed female version of this bird later, outside our campsite ablution facility.

Red-knobbed coot

From the hide itself we spotted, among others, white-throated swallows, an African marsh harrier, red-knobbed coots, dabchicks, moorhens, African darters, white-breasted cormorants, reed cormorants, African black crakes and pied kingfishers.

George itself seems to have been transformed since the last time I was there, when the freeway used to run through it. Then it had a character which somehow reflected the dour disposition of its incumbent member of parliament, P W Botha.

It is now a clean, lively place with top-class restaurants, pubs, shops and supermarkets. So, if you are unable to get what you want at the well-equipped shop/restaurant at Vic Bay, it’s just a short hop into town where your needs will be met.

Another accessible spot is the Cango Caves, about 110km away in the foothills of the Swartberge.

This was the first time I had seen this prime tourist attraction and I was most impressed with the 1,2km long display of formations built up over more than a million years.

God’s sculptural hand has been hard at work here. It’s just such a pity that over the years vandals have caused so much damage.

But the place still attracts more than 250 000 visitors a year and is well worth the trek and the hefty entrance fee.

Storms River

Just a small segment of the mountainous majesty visible from the dairy farm we visited at Storms River Mouth.

This first appeared in the Weekend Post’s Leisure supplement on October 30, 1999, under the headline, “Storms’ natural beauty” – and there was barely a mention of birds!

IF I lived in a place like Storms River I’d battle to get anything done. When you’re surrounded by so much natural beauty you can’t stop admiring it.

Kind relatives put us up for a few days in a cottage on their dairy farm, just east of the river and not far from the mouth.

It was an idyllic time, particularly for our two boys, aged six and eight, who experienced a taste of the sort of world Dylan Thomas wrote about in his poem, Fern Hill.

They were more than a trifle envious of our hosts’ children, for whom barefoot walks along cow-dung covered roads and over lush green pastures are part of daily life.

A group of sacred ibises enjoy rich pickings on the farm.

Add to that the allure of fishing in scenic dams or rowing around in a boat to explore them and you get a picture of, well, bucolic bliss.

There was a delightful moment when the five children, all nine or younger, returned with a farm hand after a successful afternoon’s fishing. Klaas, it emerged, had caught not one but two carp, and had given one to the boys.

As we parents watched World Cup rugby on the telly, in walked Bruce, aged four, with this fairly sizeable fish, beaming.

“We caught a vis!” he exclaimed. “We caught a vis!”

In a rush of excitement he told us what had happened, before slapping the slippery silver fish onto the coffee table. As for myself, I couldn’t take my eyes off the surrounding Tsitsikamma mountains. Particularly impressive is Witels Peak, which stands proud and aloof, just demanding to be climbed.

Getting a taste of the local lifestyle, we drove off one evening into a light rain (most of the time the weather was perfect) to have supper at the annual Forest Festival held at a sawmill, ahead of a half-marathon being run the next day.

The rays of the setting sun, itself a glowing ember in the swirling mist, encrusted the row of receding mountains with gold. Awesome.

Earlier, a walk from the top of the eastern cliff down to the Storms River Mouth yielded more spectacular views. While we did not take the rather costly boat trip up the river, from the swaying suspension footbridge the vertical cliffs loomed impressively as they plunged down into a narrow, mirror-smooth body of water.

During our ensuing walk from the bridge to the tourist complex at the mouth, we climbed a steep flight of wooden steps at the top of which a group of English tourists were staring at something just above them.

A Knysna lourie was perched in a tree not three metres from us. We could see the delicate white lines around its eyes and, as it flew a short way onto a rocky outcrop, the brilliant scarlet of its wings.

What an exciting sighting!

We were pleased to find that, since our last visit about a decade previously, a boardwalk has been constructed along the entire length of the walk between the bridge and the tourist complex.

The same applies with the walk through the indigenous forest to the Big Tree, which is about a kilometre north of the N2.

About 800 years old, this towering – and leaning – yellowwood tree is some 36m high. It takes eight men standing hand in hand with arms outstretched to surround the base of its trunk.

One interesting observation we made at the mouth was that timber, no matter how well treated, doesn’t survive in very damp areas. It rots.

Which is why large sections of the boardwalk are being replaced – with replica plastic planks!