Continuing the monthly look at where Atlasing, or Birdmapping as it is also known, took me in June 2020 …..

Friemersheim Area – 20 June

It was 2 weeks since my previous atlasing trip so I was keen to get out and about – Friemersheim is a small village inland of Mossel Bay and lies in pleasant countryside with quiet roads – just the thing for a morning’s relaxing birding / atlasing. Both of the pentads I chose had not yet been atlased in 2020 so met my other main criteria – one did get atlased in the meantime but that was not going to put me off

The Route

I followed the N2 highway for a short distance eastwards of Mossel Bay, turning off at Tergniet and heading along gravel roads to the southern boundary of the first pentad, 3355_2210. The “main” gravel road runs south-north with a branch to the east through a deep gorge. I spent time on these roads, then proceeded to the adjacent pentad 3355_2205, starting on its eastern boundary and doing a large anti-clockwise circle through the village, out into the hills and mountains to the north and returning to where I had started. The last stretch southwards soon left the pentad and took me back to the road to Klein Brak and homewards

Pentad 3355_2210

The gravel road runs through prime farmland with planted fields, plenty of cattle and regular small dams, good varied habitat for regular bird sightings. The first field was filled with Sacred Ibises with a sprinkling of Hadedas, while Cattle Egrets dominated the next field along with their “hosts” – some handsome looking, well-fed cattle.

Next up was a group of Black-winged Lapwings, one of the “specials” of this area which were standing like mini statues among tufts of grass in a sparsely grassed field.

A Black-winged Kite caught my attention as I passed a tall bare tree, so I stopped and used my best stealthy approach (picture it – ageing birder bent over and creeping slowly towards said tree, armed with camera, trying to be inconspicuous – I bet the Kite was chuckling to itself) which worked fine until I pressed the shutter, when the Kite decided to fly off. As it turned out, the camera captured it at the moment of take off, so I was quite pleased at getting an image different from the usual “sitting on a branch” one of this good looking raptor.

Then it was the turn of an Amethyst Sunbird, usually found in heavy foliage, sitting exposed on a fence and singing vigorously, doing a great impression of a canary.

Just to illustrate the difference that the lens setting makes – the first photo is the “normal” view from the car, the second uses the full telephoto of 600mm and the photo is further cropped to get the “close up” view – gotta love technology!

A turn-off just after, sign-posted Kleinplaas (literally “Small farm”) was one that I recalled from a previous trip, but I could not remember where it went, so had to explore it again. Very soon I found the road dropping away steeply into a deep forested kloof with a dark brown, tannin-stained river running through it.

Now I remembered it and spent time stopping and listening for the calls of forest birds – there weren’t as many as before and the irritating throb of a pump supplying water to some unseen farm was an unfortunate disturbance to the peace of this lovely spot.

Nevertheless, I picked up the calls of Sombre Greenbul, Cape Bulbul and Neddicky before proceeding up the other side of the kloof to the next plateau where a reed-lined dam produced no waterbirds but a good consolation in a Malachite Kingfisher (14%) along with Cape Grassbird and a Brown-throated Martin.

A pair of small birds in a roadside tree turned out to be Forest Canaries (14%) – a relatively scarce bird, so always pleasing to find. My attempt to photograph them was stymied as they flew off seconds after I stopped – I have yet to add this species to my photo database.

I had reached both the end of the pentad and my time limit, so turned back and set my sights on getting to the next pentad with my total standing at 40 species.

Pentad 3355_2145

I reached the start of the second pentad on its eastern boundary, a km or so outside of the village of Friemersheim, named after the birth place of Rev Johan Kretzen, a missionary from Germany who settled here originally.

Driving through the village it struck me that the settlement of about 1000 seemed untouched by the pandemic, with no signs of the social distancing and face masks which have become part of our lives.

On the other side of the village, I followed a track which branched off and took me through a series of deep valleys and tall hills. At the first stop a flash of iridescent green drew my attention to a Malachite Sunbird (10%) and moments later an African Hoopoe appeared in a nearby tree.

A stream ran through the first valley bottom and I stopped to listen – several calls told me I should spend time there and I was rewarded with Olive Bushshrike, Black-backed Puffback and a Greater Double-collared Sunbird, the latter brightening the foliage with its red and green colouring. Yet another Bar-throated Apalis showed briefly after calling vigorously from a concealed location.

Once I had left the last of the valleys behind me, the environment changed to pine plantations, many recently cut down and waiting to be replanted, so a very sterile habitat as far as birding goes. A Victorin’s Warbler and a Karoo Prinia were the only birds added before getting back to my starting point just east of Friemersheim.

From there I headed homewards, past farms and a dam where a Plain-backed Pipit (6%) had apparently come to drink.

One last deep valley lay ahead and I stopped at a busy river that ran through it, spotting a Knysna Turaco in the trees on the other side of the river – an unexpected delight, but apparently a familiar one in this pentad judging by its high reporting rate of over 60%. All I could manage was a very poor “record” photo –

That took me to two hours and 33 species for the pentad and signaled the end of my morning’s atlasing.

Footnote : Where I show percentages in brackets, these refer to the relative scarcity of the species according to the pentad surveys completed to date over the ten years that the project has been running. So if 100 pentad surveys have been done to date and a species has been recorded 5 times by the observers, it will be shown as 5%. Notable species in my book are those with a % of less than 10%