Malagasy Pond-Heron?

Sounds exotic …. and indeed it is, if you are a South African birder.

This is how I came to see this bird and put to rest a certain entry on my life list that has gnawed at my birding conscience for many years.

Rare birds have, for the last couple of years, made a habit of crossing my path, making themselves difficult to ignore if not irresistible.

I have this very arbitrary “rule” with regard to twitching rare birds which says that I only consider it if the bird is within 2 hours travelling time from wherever I am based at the time. I have had an incredible run of luck over the last two years in that I have been positioned to twitch rare bird species in places such as Katima Mulilo in Namibia (I was in nearby  Kasane Botswana at the time), Strandfontein Sewage works in Cape Town (I was visiting Cape Town), Stilbaai on the Southern Cape Coast (I was in Mossel Bay) and Mkombo dam in Limpopo Province (I was at home in Pretoria), all without breaking my rule.

When news broke via the SA Rare Bird News (SARBN) report produced so expertly by Trevor Hardaker, of a Malagasy Pond-Heron at Phinda Private Game Reserve in Kwazulu-Natal province (KZN) , I initially ignored it, Phinda being well beyond my travel limit at around 6 hours drive from Pretoria. But as the weeks passed and the Pond-Heron was still being seen, on top of which our timeshare week in Durban was approaching, I realised that Phinda, near the town of Hluhluwe in Zululand, would be a lot closer if we travelled from Durban – some 2 and a half hours drive by my estimate.

Suddenly it became do-able without exceeding my travel limit by much, and in any case we would be on holiday, so what better time to fit in a side trip to northern KZN, which we had last visited 15 or more years ago.

What made this twitch different was that it was only possible to look for the bird if you joined one of the game drives that various birders were booking through AndBeyond, who run a few lodges at Phinda and had permission from the concession owners at Mziki to access the dam where the Pond-Heron was seen.

I started looking out for a game drive opportunity that coincided with our first weekend at our timeshare unit ie 24 – 25 June. I soon found that the weekend drives were fully booked, but it seemed that no one had got as far as booking the Sunday afternoon drive…..

After some serious should I / shouldn’t I thoughts and with our Friday drive to Durban looming, I decided at the last moment to phone Phinda reservations, made a provisional booking and the game was on! Trevor Hardaker kindly sent out an email note on Friday morning to all SARBN subscribers and the calls started coming in as we commenced our drive on the N3 to Durbs. Some time after our halfway lunch stop at Harrismith, the game drive was fully taken up, Phinda’s invoice received and paid and details had been sent to the 5 other participants. It’s amazing what can be achieved with a smart phone on the go!

Off to Phinda

We were glad of the Saturday to recover at our timeshare apartment in La Lucia so that, come Sunday, we were ready to travel again – this time northwards up the N2 National road to Richards Bay, then on to Hluhluwe where we had a burger lunch before heading to the Phinda gate some 20 kms further.

I dropped Gerda off at the Phinda Mountain Lodge, on the way to Mziki Private camp where we were to be collected. Along the way game was plentiful including a Rhino family, one of them de-horned as an anti-poaching measure as is the trend nowadays, also Nyala, Zebra and Warthogs.

Some interesting birds caught my eye, the pick being a Long-tailed Paradise Whydah with its impressive tail feathers almost too long to fit into the frame, followed closely by a striking Scarlet-chested Sunbird in the Aloes at the lodge.

When I arrived at Mziki camp entrance and parked in the demarcated spots (these Phinda folk are organised) the other twitchers were all there – not twitching as such, in fact quite calm, but looking forward to finding the bird that had brought us all to this place – Dave Minney, Johan Boshoff, Jon de Guisti, Trish Jonsson and Ken Jarvis. Just a few minutes later our game drive vehicle arrived with Zandri Benade at the wheel – the vehicle looked far too large for this petite young lady to handle, but as it turned out she drove it like a pro.

And so we set off, excited, to Mziki dam – which was literally “just down the road” and we reached it a few minutes later, where Zandri found the Pond-Heron a further few minutes later! Other groups had looked for up to two hours to find the Pond-Heron, but in our case – there it was – almost before we had a chance to build up some tension and excitement!

At least we could all relax in the knowledge that our long journeys had paid off and now we could just enjoy the bird. And enjoy it we did, for close to two hours, watching its every move while enjoying the peaceful setting and beautiful surroundings.

Initially the Pond-Heron was engrossed in its search for prey along the grassy edge of the dam, probing now and then in the shallow water then moving in stalker fashion, veeeerrrryy slllooowwwly and deliberately, hardly causing even a tiny ripple which may warn the fish, frogs and aquatic insects of its approach.

Zandri edged the vehicle closer, trying for better views and camera angles to take advantage of the lighting. The Pond-Heron played along nicely, posing in various positions and actions :

• Stalking mode

• Coy behind grass fronds

• A short flight to show off its “whiter than white” OMO advert wings

• Moving into the open with perfect light conditions, showing off its heavy streaking and yellow legs

• Preening at water’s edge

• Sipping water

• Moving cautiously past a crocodile near the water, eyeing it in the process, while we all held our breath wondering if this would be the Pond-Heron’s last hurrah

• Joining a Yellow-billed Stork and African Spoonbill foraging in the shallows

 

While this was happening we were also entertained by other visitors to the water :

• A handsome Nyala bull coming to drink, joined later by a female and a younger male

 

• Yellow-billed Stork flying in and joining the lone Spoonbill

 

• Pied Kingfisher flying by with fish prey just caught, later continuing its familiar hovering search for the next one

The afternoon concluded with a celebratory drink and a toast, where after we all went our separate ways, thoroughly happy about the outcome and a very special lifer.

Oh and that bit about my birding conscience at the start of this post …

In fact my life list already included this rare species, based on a sighting 23 years ago at a small pond at Tshipise in the far north-east of SA. Can one trust a sighting from your early years of birding, when I had no appreciation of rarities as such? There have only been a handful of sightings in our region, mostly in Mozambique with just one previous sighting in South Africa itself, also in KZN at Ndumo July 2005 (according to Roberts) so what are the chances that I indeed saw this species in July 1994? Actually I am still mostly convinced that I did record the species at the time, but am glad I could put all doubts about including it in my life list to rest with this sighting.