Every year, Birdlife South Africa encourages birders to take part in Big Birding Day no matter where they are in the country. The idea is to chalk up as many different species in 24 hours within a radius of 50km. Species seen or heard may be recorded between midnight on Friday 27 November to Midnight on Saturday 28 November. Teams can be up to four people working together. In order to take part in the competition, you need to register beforehand and most of the competitors use BirdLaser to record their sightings. The Earl and I have never treated birding as a sport but we thought today it would be fun to see how many species we could get in a day. We came nowhere near the bird nerds who competed officially! We cannot believe that some managed over 300 species in a single day! Our neighbours got over 60 but they birded in a bigger area than we did. We just did the Mahonie Loop and the tar road which was a distance of about 30km. Our starting time was 7:30 am until 11:30 am and then again from 13:30 to 16:30. It was raining most of the morning and only started clearing up at around 15:00. We chalked up 47 species and enjoyed every moment. I have posted some of the photos of the birds we saw as well as some of the other creatures.
The rains have come and the impala moms are dropping their lambs. This morning we were delighted to see lots of little ones gamboling about and enjoying being alive.




























Tomorrow we pack up and make our way to Letaba.
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A good number of birds found
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Yes but not as many as the day before😁 The rain affected our sightings and we didn’t go to Pafuri where there are more to see.
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Mahonie Loop is another treasure of the Kruger. You just never know what you’ll find. Well, apart from nyalas – they’re guaranteed!
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Nyalas were plentiful indeed 🙂
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I love your photo captions! Looking forward to hearing about the next leg down to Letaba 😊
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Thank you 🙂
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Your blog is amazing 🙂
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Thank you
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Brings back memories of our time in Kruger…beautiful images.
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