THE Issue 22 LARKMarch/April 2019 N EWSLETTER OF B IRDLIFE P OLOKWA N E Affiliated to Birdlife South Africa The Lark is the newsletter of Birdlife Polokwane and is published bimonth- ly. It publishes reports of club activi- ties, trip reports, photographic contri- Contents butions and any natural history notes REGULARS of birds or events involving birds. Contributions are accepted in English or Afrikaans and are accepted at the White-necked Picathartes discretion of the editors. Non-mem- Dear Mankind bers are also welcome to contribute, especially if it is of relevance to birds or birding in the Limpopo Province. 63 Bird briefs When submitting images, please sub- Coucal trichoptiles • Geoph- agy by African Olive Pigeon mit high resolution images without and Cape Canary • Eerste any borders or frames. Kalkoenibis nes in die Limpo- po Provinsie in meer as 30 jaar! • Observations on the Eastern The editors reserve the right to edit Nicator • Collateral damage articles as necessary. All images are in someone else’s war: the in- triguing story of three gassed copyright protected and the proper- Spike-heeled Larks • Thicket ty of the author/s of the article un- birds • Nightjar identification: less otherwise stated. Please send all Fiery-necked Nightjar • A bird in the hand • Birds of a differ- your contributions to the editors at ent feather also sometimes [email protected]. flock together The opinions expressed by contribu- tors in this newsletter are not neces- 95 Interesting sightings 16 December 2018 - 15 February 2019 sarily those of the editors, the Birdlife Polokwane committee or Birdlife South Africa. 103 Upcoming events DEADLINE FOR THE NEXT ISSUE: 15 April 2019 ADVERTISING SPACE AVAILABLE Cover Thick-billed Cuckoo © Jody De Bruyn. Contact Lisa Grosel 083 380 2322 1 The Lark 22 • March/April 2019 • Issue 22 The Lark CLUB NEWS, TRIP REPOrtS AND MEMBERS’ COntrIBUTIONS 4 26 The Southern African Bird Atlas Project: a tool to monitor changes in bird distri- Beyond expectations bution Daniel Engelbrecht Ernst Retief 2919 41 The hunt for Pel’s Fishing Owl Sukses op Steendal Johan and Leoni Van Vuuren Minkie Prinsloo 32 47 What a day! Derek Engelbrecht The Lark 22 2 Editor's chirps Water is life! The incredibly good rains we’ve experienced in and around Polok- wane resulted in a flood of some rarities into our area. Baillon’s and Spotted Crakes, Allen’s Gallinule and Lesser Moorhen became household names, and many of our members got to see these birds right on our dooorstep at the Flora Park Dam! A couple of members were also lucky to see a Pacific Golden Plover at De Loskop in early February - only the second record for the province. Of course these specials would have gone unoticed had it not been for the eagle-eyes of some of you and the disposition called twitching of others. Well done to all who managed to see these birds which might not be seen in our area for many years again. Last but not least - keep those articles to'The Lark' rolling in! Raelene and Daniel P.O. Box 699 Fauna Park 0787 Tel: 015 263 6473 www.birdlifepolokwane.co.za www.facebook.com/birdlifepolokwane PRESIDENT Joe Grosel • CHAIRPERSON Jody De Bruyn • DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON Mark Friskin • SECRETARY Marcia Van Tonder • TREASURERS Nick Baglow and Julia Friskin • WEBSITE AND IT COORDINATOR Jody De Bruyn • PRO AND VENUE COORDINA- TOR Lisa Grosel • EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR Richter Van Tonder • RESEARCH AND MON- ITORING Derek Engelbrecht • NEWSLETTER EDITORS Raelene Engelbrecht and Daniel Engelbrecht • ADDITIONAL MEMBERS Anneliese Pretorius, Conrad Van Tonder, Willem Van der Merwe, Les Reynolds, Johan Van Vuuren 3 The Lark 22 beyond expectations My record-breaking year in the Polokwane Polokwane 100K Challenge Daniel Engelbrecht Green Sandpiper, Polokwane Game Reserve magine 450 species, 365 exactly what it’s all about, how it days and 31416 km2 to works and why it is so much fun to find them in. For birders participate in. on theI Polokwane 100 km Chal- So, to start off, a common lenge (hereafter the Polokwane question is: “What exactly is the 100K) the task is simple in theory, Polokwane 100K about?” The an- but near impossible in practise. To swer is quite simple. The challenge see 450 or even 440 species for that takes place within a 100 km radi- matter requires a lot of effort, com- us of its centre point in downtown mitment, travel, and a lot of pa- Polokwane. The challenge kicks off tience. This article is a reflection on amidst the jubilation and fireworks my 2018 Polokwane 100K; it covers at midnight on the 1st of January The Lark 22 4 of the new year, and birders then my Birdlasser app on the phone have the challenge of finding and and logged my first of many species identifying as many bird species as for the year. possible in the calendar year (with- As we entered the small town in the boundaries of the 100 km ra- (more of a truck stop to be hon- dius of course), all before the chal- est) of Vivo, I was already on nine lenge ends amidst jubilation and species. There was, however, one fireworks on December the 31st at easy species here that can be chal- midnight again. Now that we are all lenging to find in the rest of the on the same page, let’s start off at Polokwane 100K area. I walked to- the beginning of 2018. wards the local butchery where, in My 2018 Polokwane 100K the middle of a parking lot, stood started off at the Blouberg Nature a medium-sized, scrawny Acacia. I Reserve. That is a bit of a problem scanned the tree until I found the as Blouberg Nature Reserve isn’t nests of my target bird, halfway up quite within the boundaries of the the tree. Sure enough, a Red-billed Polokwane 100K (by only 2 km!!). Buffalo Weaver popped its head out This meant that any species seen and flew off, it was number 10 for or heard in the reserve wouldn’t 2018, and I was in the double dig- count towards my year list. This its! harsh fact would become particu- Somewhere between Vivo and larly frustrating towards the end of Polokwane I got a notification on the year when searching for an elu- my phone that Jody De Bruyn had sive Polokwane 100K species such just found two rarities for the 100K as the Swallow-tailed Bee-eater. region; a Collared Pratincole and Anyway, to get back on track, we Pectoral Sandpipers at Hout River left Blouberg Nature Reserve and Dam. These were species that could headed for Polokwane on the first make or break an end of the year day of the new year. As soon as we target, and so it was essential that entered ‘the zone’, I ticked off my I picked up these ‘vagrants’ to our first species: a Yellow-billed Kite area. Hout River Dam is somewhat flying slowly overhead. I opened of a treasure chest for Polokwane 5 The Lark 22 Above A pair of Pectoral Sandpipers, Hout River Dam. 100K birders. The dam offers a large mudflat at the inlet, and always seems to deliver good wader sight- ceived another important mes- ings. We drove to the dam, walked sage, a European Nightjar had been down the riverbed to the mudflats seen roosting in a small tree at the and immediately picked up both Polokwane Golf Club. The bird, the pratincole and the sandpipers. a Palaearctic migrant is always a These two specials, along with a challenging species and ticking it number of other species brought off now would mean that it didn’t my year’s total to 94 species at the need to be chased later on in the end of day 1. It was a start, a sur- year. We arrived at the golf club and prisingly good start to the year. soon found the tree where the bird The action didn’t stop after was reportedly roosting, after much day one, on the second day, I re- scanning and searching we found it The Lark 22 6 halfway up the tree on a horizon- started ticking off my target species: tal branch. To the untrained eye Cloud Cisticola, Northern Black it would be nothing more than an Korhaan, White-bellied Bustard, outgrowth on the tree, to me it was and Long-tailed Widowbird were a number 136. couple of my first highveld species. The Acacia veld habitat is cer- A fairly reliable recent addition to tainly one of the dominant biomes the Polokwane region, the Grey- within the Polokwane 100K area, backed Sparrow-Lark, was found at with around 200 species commonly several spots around Chebeng. We found in this habitat type. The re- also trawled for a species that had maining five days of my first week remained undiscovered for over would be used to capitalize on this 50 years in the Limpopo Province area. I scored some fantastic spe- but was rediscovered in the area cies, including Monotonous Lark, around Chebeng a couple of years a flock of Burchell’s Sandgrouse, ago. Within the Polokwane 100K, an Icterine Warbler calling from the Melodious Lark is somewhat of a small shrub, a pair of enigmat- a ghost - it comes and goes and is ic Secretarybirds, and best of all a always difficult to locate as its pre- Dwarf Bittern flying over a small ferred habitat (long grass with bare wetland in the Polokwane Game Reserve. My next stop was the C h e b e n g grasslands; to local bird- ers this is our equivalent of birding on the Highveld.