Birds and wildlife of Cape Town

Apart for being one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Cape Town hosts great wildlife. In my previous posts I shared my experiences at sea and in the Boulders penguin colony. In this post I will clear up the rest of the stuff we saw in and around Cape Town. I display here some of the birds I saw and photographed - mostly common stuff but all African birds are delicious IMO.
In my first afternoon we went for a nice walk on the beach at the stunning Hout Bay. Not too many birds but the view there is breathtaking.

Great Crested (Swift) Tern

Sandwich Terns only look somewhat uninspiring, but they are bad-ass migrants!

Cape Fur Seal behaving like a good boy

Hout Bay

In my first morning I woke up early and went to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, before the rest of my family got out of bed. It was quite a productive hour. And, again, very beautiful. Despite the drought, the gardens looked good.

Swee Waxbill - Kirstenbosch specialty

Cape Sugarbird - what a bird

Hadada Ibis - common as dirt but super charismatic, and pretty in the golden morning sun

Brimstone Canary

Record shot of the scarcer Forest Canary

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

Another early morning my brother and I went with Trevor to Strandfontein WTP, a regional hotspot for birding. It was a superb morning with 90 species, lots of individuals and some cool stuff.

Some of the Hottentot Teal we had among the many Red-billed Teals

Hundreds of Cape Shovelers

Spur-winged Geese

 Black-headed Heron

Fewer Lesser Flamingos among the many greaters.

Three-banded Plovers - check that stunning red eyering

 Fun exercise to search for Grey-hooded Gulls among the many Hartlaub's 

Note the diagnostic dark underwing of the Grey-hooded compared to Hartlaub's

Black-winged Kite 

The impressive White-necked Raven

White-throated Swallow

The stunningly beautiful and distinctive female Cape Weaver

A visit to Cape Point was very powerful, because of the wild wind that day. As a result we saw few birds , but still enjoyed it very much. Cape Buntings are stupidly tame there:

I didn't succeed to photograph the parents of this fresh juv familiar Chat

We failed to find the Cape Mountain Zebras there, but saw some impressive Eland at a distance. The Chacma Baboons certainly found us.

Black-girdled Lizard - mini dragon

Cape Point

African Penguins - Boulders

Returned to the UK this morning - I had a fantastic time in South Africa. I had wifi almost nowhere, so couldn't blog on the road as I normally do. So in the next week or two I will post here some highlights of the trip.
One of the best birding experiences at  Cape Town was the visit to Boulders NP at Simon's Town just south of Cape Town. The reserve protects one of the more accessible colonies of the globally Endangered African Penguin. It is a very popular site that receives tens of thousands of visitors a year. However, it is well run and the birds don't seem disturbed at all by the visitors, as far as I could tell.
Penguins are sweet and comic birds - what's not to like about them? The way they walk clumsily on the sand demonstrates how much more comfortable they feel in the water.

 Walk like a penguin

Sometimes dreams come true 

Once upon a time they were called Jackass Penguin - that's why:

Boulders

There are some penguins outside the reserve too. They need to be more tolerant towards humans

The large boulders were covered with cormorants, mainly Cape and some White-breasted scattered between them:

Swift (Crested) Terns breed nearby and flew up and down the coast:

Many Kelp Gulls everywhere - impressive gulls

1st cycle

Nobody was happy with the visit of this youngster:

African Oystercatchers flew back and forth, chasing each other:

Not too many passerines in this coastal park, only common stuff.

Cape Wagtail

Cape Bulbul

Cape Town pelagic trip

Time to start catching up... On February 10th we went out to sea with Trevor. At first it was unclear whether we will go out at all, because of a storm that passed through the region with strong winds and high swell. Eventually we decided to give it a go. As soon as we sailed past Cape Point the swell rose up to 3-4 meters. Not quite comfortable for a terrestrial birder like myself. I took cyclizine that certainly did the job and I felt quite OK all trip, but photography was not safe and easy. As we headed out towards the shelf drop we started seeing pelagic birds. Rather soon we encountered a large concentration of about 60 Sabine's Gulls. Brilliant birds. We were hoping to see more further on so didn't really stop to play around with them, hence the poor photo.

Soon we also found our first albatrosses - in fact the first one was an Atlantic Yellow-nosed. Again, we were hoping to find thousands behind a trawler, so we didn't stop for them. Eventually, we did not find a trawler - Trevor thought that they were not out because of the storm. We chummed a bit instead - that brought in only White-chinned Petrel - the most ubiquitous seabird of the day:

At about 15 miles off Cape Point things weren't looking very good. We couldn't find a trawler, and apart for myself all others felt very bad. So we decided to head back earlier than planned. Near Cape Point we spent some time with a feeding frenzy of hundreds of Cape Gannets, Sooty and Cory's Shearwaters and Cape Cormorants. Both Trevor and me thought we had a Flesh-footed Shear but it was too quick and views were not great. It got away.

Cape Gannets

Eventually the trip was less productive that we had hoped for. Still, we saw some good birds (see my eBird checklist here). I know that it's part of the game but we could not help feeling disappointed. It was great to spend more time with Trevor at sea - he and Harry the skipper did the best they could, but luck was not on our side that day. Thanks anyway to Trevor for this tough, but good day out.