Birds of South Africa January/February 2020

In this blog I have tried to compile a record of the different birds we saw on our holiday to South Africa in January and February 2020.

We started our holiday with a safari trip to the Thornybush Private Game Reserve in Greater Kruger. Although the main focus of the trip was to observe the animals in the park there were plenty of opportunities to see lots of birds.

We spent three nights at the Chapungu Lodge in Greater Kruger and took part in 6 game drives (3 in the morning from 5 am to 8am and 3 in the afternoon from 4 pm to 7 pm).

We then flew back to Johannesburg and then on to Port Elizabeth. From there we drove along the Garden Route to Cape Town stopping (for 2 or 3 nights each time) at St Francis Bay, Knysna, Oudtshoorn, Robertson, and Franschoek. When we arrived in Cape Town we spent 10 nights in Camps Bay.

We were due to do a birdwatching trip up the Kromme River in St Francis but this was cancelled due to persistent rain. The only other organised bird watching trip was to the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve when we were staying in Cape Town.

Not all our time was spent bird watching We managed to pack lots in to our holiday including seeing South Africa play England in a cricket ODI at Newlands and visits to lots of vineyards and botanical gardens.

I have tried to show a variety of the birds we saw at each place. Although I am very pleased with many of the photos others are not so good but are included for ID purposes. Currently there is no particular order to the birds but they are generally in the order in which we saw them.

Please note: I am still adding photos to this collection and continuing the process of identifying and labelling them.

Click on heading for each place (on the following pages there will be a link to return to this page or use the back button on your browser)

Birds of Thornybush Private Game Reserve, Greater Kruger