After driving through miles and miles of farmland and pastures we arrived at our hotel in Swellindam, which is about 100 miles due east of Cape Town. The Aan de Oever Guesthouse was nestled within a quiet residential neighborhood and we were assigned to the Guinea Fowl room – here are the keys for the room:
Notice a couple of things in addition to the usual room key? First off, the round object at the top is like an AirTag, so if you lose your keys or run off with them they can track them down. The second thing that struck me was the remote control on the right. Why a remote control? See below:
Like many of the places we stayed in, there was a high fence surrounding the property and a remote controlled gate to get in and out, so we needed a fob to open and close the gate.
We arrived at the guesthouse as the sun was setting so we couldn’t do any birding then but Josh had us meet behind the guesthouse the next day at 6 AM to look for new species. We found 28 species within an hour! Here’s what the grounds looked like; a stream ran across the back of the property which attracted many birds.
Masked Weavers flitted around the property in search of nesting materials and carrying them to their always-in-progress spherical nests.
A Double-collared Sunbird hung upside-down to feed on the seeds of one of the trees on the grounds.
A great look at a Speckled Mousebird feeding as its long tail dangled straight down.
One of the more colorful birds seen behind the guesthouse was a Brown-hooded Kingfisher. Here’s a distant shot of it showing its bright-red beak and feet.
After about an hour of birding we went in for breakfast which included delicious pastries, pancakes and cooked-to-order eggs. After breakfast we started to amble back to our room in preparation for the day when someone spotted the Bird Of The Day – a Common Hoopoe! It was just walking along the fence line near the stream and I started snapping pics of it. At first its crown was laying down but at one point it raised its beautiful feathered crown for about five seconds – exactly what I wanted to see!
The fence line was distracting in the image so I used the Generative AI Remove tool in Lightroom to take it out. Karen would say that’s altering the picture too much – I would say it looks more “natural”. Which one do you prefer?
We left the Aan de Oever Guesthouse and had a short drive to Bontebok National Park. As Josh bought our entry tickets we watched several birds come to a fountain in the courtyard. We don’t think much about pigeons in the U.S. but the Speckled Pigeon here was spectacular!
Look at this closeup of the Speckled Pigeon’s head and note that its iris is in the shape of a keyhole! This is not true for all Speckled Pigeons but I did see other shots of them on eBird with a similar iris.
Here a Laughing Dove flies in to share the same perch by the fountain with the pigeon.
A Yellow Canary came in to drink and bathe at the fountain, too – such an overwhelming yellow color in the early morning light.
A Karoo Scrub-Robin foraged on the ground in the courtyard. There are over 100 bird species with “Robin” as part of their common name. Back in the day when British explorers traveled the world, when they saw a bird with an orange/red breast they called it Robin-something.
After a couple hours at Bontebok NP we headed back to Aan de Oever Guesthouse for lunch and then check out. While loading our bags into the vehicles a Rufous-breasted Sparrowhawk slowly circled overhead with its lunch (a small bird) clutched in its talons.
We had an uneventful drive west to our lodging for the next couple of nights, the Fairy Knowe Hotel. There we saw one of the most spectacular birds of the trip, which I’ll share in my next post…
CLICK HERE to see all the posts about our South Africa Bird Tour. Karen and I have had the opportunity to travel to many interesting places in search of birds. If you would like read about some of our other Bird Tours CLICK HERE.
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What a spectacular time you kids must have had!