Punda Mania at Punda Maria, Kruger National Park.

White-backed vultures making way for the Cape vulture on top of the Carcass

Birders from all over South Africa flocked to Punda Maria, for a birding weekend. The weekend is a new annual event organised by SANParks Honorary Rangers.  I along with my colleague (John Adamson) was given the task to guide one of the four groups of 8 birders for the weekend. The weekend was kicked off with a presentation by Joe Grosel about birding the northern corner of South Africa, the famous Crooks Corner, followed by a sun-downer at the lick of the magnificent Pennant-winged Nightjar. With the nightjars aerial display of its long first primaries with the glow of the setting sun indicates a great weekend of birding ahead. A short night drive back to camp produces a female leopard patrolling along the road, everyone gets a good look with a few lucky photos of her in-between the excitement of seeing her.

Female Chinspot Batis in its nest

          The Friday morning we get our clues for the first leg of the competition. This entailed photographing the object deciphered from the clues. With 15 clues we got them all, photographing all of them was another challenge in its own. We raced off to Crooks Corner, en route we came across a buffalo carcass making one of our required photos an easy tick, the White-backed vulture sooner than we had photographed it we realized we could tick-off another photo with a Cape Vulture feeding off the same carcass. Most of our photos were to begotten at Pafuri around Crooks Corner and so on we rushed to photograph Meeve’s (long-tailed) starlings, Crested guineafowls and Broad-billed rollers. A few trick non-bird clues were thrown in, like the two Barassas palm trees, Lebombo ironwoods and even the abundant Nyala. As noon approached we were still lacking a lark, Bohms spinetail for the photo list and of all species a goliath heron. Without getting the heron and impossible to photograph a Bohm’s spinetail we had to meet our deadline back at the camp or get disqualified. In the rush back we made it in time to only have missed two of the 15 clues. Later that afternoon we had a photographic challenge in camp and we raced around the camp trying to find the likes of a parasitic brooder, Leopard-flowered epiphyte and others. After rushing around in the heat of the afternoon we came short on the parasitic brooder. Being a scorcher of an afternoon even the birds we sitting out the heat hidden away. Later that evening we had a quiet night drive along the Mahonie Loop, finding only a marsh owl to add to our accumulative list for the weekend.

Grey Penduline-tit completing its nest

Saturday morning up at the sparrows fart to receive our next event, Bird Atlasing (www.sabap2.co.za), with the Kruger National Park having inaccessible area, our task was to atlas some virgin Pentabs. My teams Pentab was along the eastern boundary of the park just south of the Nwambia Sandveld. We headed out to be rewarded with an Arnot’s chat along the main road and Chinspot batis sitting on her nest en route out to our Pentab’s. As the day heated up the atlasing got tougher yet achieving our goal we did two pentabs and stopped by in the Sandveld to try find the Pink-throated twinspot, Rudd’s apalis and Gorgeous bush-shrike, knowing we were in the wrong section of sandveld for the Fawn-coloured lark. Back at camp we had a good afternoon rest before heading out for a late afternoon drive for another sun-downer with the Pennant-winged nightjar, we found a Grey penduline-tit nest with 4-5 birds busily putting the finishing touches on the nest. A rush back to the camp for Prize giving and dinner. My group was announced the winners of the weekend, not to say we were the best as the second team came in close second, with 4 points behind us while the last team only 13 points behind.

Elephant herd seen near Crooks Corner making there way down to drink