DECEMBER 2022 GARDEN BIRDS

December is a hot month that flies past in the build-up towards Christmas and taming the garden after receiving some welcome rain. Cattle egrets flying low over the trees were the first birds to greet the month – making their way to the various members of the Urban Herd that regularly graze near our home. Speckled Mousebirds also fly across the garden as they search for edible berries here and there – they have ignored the fruit I put out and so I imagine there is plenty of natural food about for them at this time of the year. A pair of Common Starlings have been stuffing their beaks with food to take back to their chicks and – such sad news – the Lesser-striped Swallows had almost finished building their mud nest when it came tumbling down. Here they are ‘discussing’ their future plans.

It is always a pleasure to see the pair of Spectacled Weavers visiting the feeding area.

We usually only see a single pair of Greyheaded Sparrows, but this month they had one youngster with them.

I cannot resist showing you yet another photograph of Meneer, the Common Fiscal, who daily comes to see what titbits I have on the table and eats them from my hand. My youngest granddaughter stepped outside a few days ago, a ginger biscuit in hand, and was taken aback when this same fiscal fluttered in front of her face and cheekily took a bite of her biscuit!

The most exciting sighting – and the luckiest shot ever – this month was seeing a Burchell’s Coucal alight on a branch of the Erythrina tree. I grabbed my camera and focused on it through my study window, clicked and when I looked up it had disappeared as silently as it had arrived! We have been hearing its burbling calls all month.

My bird list for this month:
African Green Pigeon
African Hoopoe
Amethyst Sunbird
Black-collared Barbet
Black-eyed (Dark-capped) Bulbul
Black-headed Oriole
Bokmakierie
Bronze Manikin
Burchell’s Coucal
Cape Robin-Chat
Cape Turtle Dove
Cape Wagtail
Cape Weaver
Cape White-eye
Cattle Egret
Common Fiscal
Common Starling
Diederik Cuckoo
Fork-tailed Drongo
Greater Double-collared Sunbird
Green Woodhoopoe
Grey-headed Sparrow
Hadeda Ibis
Klaas’s Cuckoo
Knysna Turaco
Laughing Dove
Lesser-striped Swallow
Olive Thrush
Paradise Flycatcher
Pin-tailed Whydah
Pied Crow
Red-eyed Dove
Rednecked Spurfowl
Red-winged Starling
Southern Masked Weaver
Speckled Mousebird
Speckled Pigeon
Spectacled Weaver
Spotted Thick-knee
Village Weaver
White-rumped Swift
Yellow-fronted Canary

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SAFETY IN THE KITCHEN

There are no handy hints here. However, as a change from our usual mode of camping, we spent a few days after Christmas in one of the delightful Forest Cabins in the Addo Elephant National Park. Each of these log cabins is tucked between hedges of Spekboom and other indigenous plants to ensure one’s privacy.

This is a typical path leading to one of these cabins.

You might wonder what these pictures have to do with the title of this piece. While each of these cabins is equipped with a pleasant braai area, they also have a fridge, kettle, toaster and a microwave. There is also a camp kitchen containing two-plate stoves and the sinks for washing up. I am probably not the only visitor not to look up when I enter the communal kitchen to either cook or clean the dishes. That is, until I kept seeing this pair of Lesser-striped swallows preening themselves nearby throughout the day.

What a wonderful opportunity to photograph them from so close, I thought as I passed by them yet again. They didn’t seem to mind the attention.

It was late on the second afternoon of our stay that I spotted one of them flying out of the communal kitchen. Curious, I at last looked up to see this sturdy, well-constructed mud nest against the ceiling of the kitchen.

Safety in the kitchen indeed. Here their nest is safe from the elements; it is high enough not to be disturbed by any human visitors; and has probably been used year after year.

NATURAL PATTERNS III

Intricately woven patterns on the trunk of a fig tree.

The rough splitting of bark.

Spoor of an antelope in soft sand.

A damp Lesser-striped Swallow fluffing up its feathers.

A LESSON IN PERSEVERANCE

Every year a pair of Lesser-striped Swallows return to build their mud nest under the eaves of our house. They build their nest in exactly the same place, although the direction of the tunnel opening may change slightly with every construction. This summer there had been enough rain for them to start their nest soon after their arrival.

The pair of swallows perch on the telephone cable, resting between their labour of collecting balls of mud, cleaning their beaks, or possibly discussing their building plans.

The nest gradually takes shape. The different colour of the mud reveals the variety of sources these birds use for their building material.

Both birds bring mud in their beaks. Here they are shaping the bowl of the nest together.

They appear to masticate the mud in their beaks before adding the ball to the row.

The gap finally nears closure.

After this has been achieved, a tunnel opening is formed to complete the outer structure of the nest. Then follows the process of lining it with soft materials before the eggs can be laid.

You would think that their summer labour is over and that these birds can now settle down to breeding and raising their family. They are fortunate some years and I hoped this would be one of them. I watched nest lining being brought in … not many days later the entire nest crashed to the ground! For days the birds either perched on the telephone cable or on the bathroom window. Finally, they decided to move to plan B – as they occasionally do – and painstakingly built a new nest around the shady side of our house.

This one remained intact for them to raise at least one chick … then it too dashed to the ground.

NESTS

The trees in our garden are now so tall and thick with foliage that it isn’t always easy to find the nests of birds, even if you know they are there – somewhere. A pair of Cape Robin-chats had me fascinated for days on end as they flew back and forth with food in their beaks … I never could find their actual nest deep in the shrubbery, although their offspring later made an appearance. Two Common Fiscals have plied the food trails to their respective nests for weeks (I think both have actually nested beyond our garden perimeter) and one brought its youngster to the feeding tray a few times before leaving it to fend for itself.

I located the messy nest of an Olive Thrush in a tangle of branches near the wash line, but not in a position to photograph – my neighbour couldn’t get a good photographic view of it either, although we both enjoyed watching the activity around it.This is one taken some years ago:

Black-collared Barbets have brought their offspring to feed on cut apples …

Much more prominent is the mud nest the pair of Lesser-striped Swallows build under the eaves every year:

The rain came at just the right time for them and they set to work straight away. The sturdy nest they built outside our front door one year has been taken over by White-rumped Swifts. Life is filled with trials for these swallows for this lovely nest, already lined with soft materials, fell down one night and shattered. Days of sad twittering followed until the pair again returned to Plan B and built a nest under the eaves around the shadier side of our house – where they have resorted to building in previous years – and this one has stayed put.

Also easy to see was the flurry of activity among the weavers as they set about constructing nests at the end of  branches of a tree in our back garden:

Despite the chattering and hard work going on here, within days these nests had been abandoned and the birds had looked elsewhere to create their happy colony.

A very-hard-to-miss nest, which I have featured before, is the one in which a pair of Hadeda Ibises have successfully reared two chicks:

Both chicks are in the nest here – only their dark tails are showing.