My atlassing partner Jason has started exams and has to spend more time studying than atlassing...so this morning we chose a pentad that has not yet been done during 2014, was close as possible to home and also had some water to boost our species count. We got to the water, which is a perennial fountain amongst dry maize fields. A calling Black Crake, African Rail and African Snipe gave us some hope to do well. Then a soft Wooop - wooop - wooop comes out of the reeds. I feel something tightening around my chest and breathe to Jason Impossible, but that sounds like a Flufftail. The only flufftail we can expect to find around Hartbeesfontein is Red-chested and the call is not anything like their call. We whip out our cellphones and go through the calls - only Striped Flufftail fits! Read the habitat: alongside streams - check. Dry grassland with bracken and brambles - check. Marshy habitats in grasslands - check. Avoids steep slopes and rocky areas - check. Also in croplands - check. But it is about 800 km from the nearest known distribution. Then we hear it calling further away than before but closer to an open marshy area with lots of cover nearby. We move over there and try a call. The bird answers. There is a movement! But alas, is a Cape Wagtail I grab my directional microphone and recorder and thankfully get a good recording of the sound. This is an ORF of huge proportions and we need all the help we can get to convince André Marx! I ask Jason to keep his eyes peeled. I am going back to get my camera with the wider angle lens to at least show the habitat fits the bird. I get back take the photo and say to Jason that we have spent 3/4 of an hour at one spot trying to see the bird and our total species count is only at 15. We will have to leave. One last intense look at the reeds. I lift the binoculars and...there sits a flippen Namaqua Dove on a reed. Jason and I deflate like two punctured balloons. But try this - listen to the two calls, imagine you get an area surrounded by reeds and marsh and a bird calls like that. Maybe not too much of a bad mistake to make:) Then it wa a rush for species. And thanks to Jasons eyes and my ears we hit 51 species an hour and a quarter later. But this is one pentad we will not forget for a long time!
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 15:20:42 +0000