When is a "speciality" a "speciality"? that is the question!!
I was tracking lions in an area of miombo woodland the other day when a grey bird flew out of a bush near the road. I slammed on brakes and craned to see where the bird flew. I spotted some movement in an Ochna pulchra a short distance away and with the bins on it I knew I was looking at a "special bird". It was a White-breasted cuckooshrike Coracina pectoralis. In my bird book it says that it is an uncommon resident but the distribution map shows most of Zimbabwe as covered by this species.
Grabbing my big stick (the camera with the 600mm lens on it) I crept closer to the tree but could not see the bird. As I walked underneath it it flew out and into a masasa brachestegia speciformis and this is where i managed to get a few decent shots.
It is not a bird that anyone here mentions having seen so I was over the moon.
I guess what we must keep in mind in our insatiable quest for the "rare" is that there is a lot of great birding to be had all around us even if it doesn't exactly fit the definitions of our more extreme counterparts! (myself included).
The Hwange Birder
I was tracking lions in an area of miombo woodland the other day when a grey bird flew out of a bush near the road. I slammed on brakes and craned to see where the bird flew. I spotted some movement in an Ochna pulchra a short distance away and with the bins on it I knew I was looking at a "special bird". It was a White-breasted cuckooshrike Coracina pectoralis. In my bird book it says that it is an uncommon resident but the distribution map shows most of Zimbabwe as covered by this species.
Grabbing my big stick (the camera with the 600mm lens on it) I crept closer to the tree but could not see the bird. As I walked underneath it it flew out and into a masasa brachestegia speciformis and this is where i managed to get a few decent shots.
It is not a bird that anyone here mentions having seen so I was over the moon.
I guess what we must keep in mind in our insatiable quest for the "rare" is that there is a lot of great birding to be had all around us even if it doesn't exactly fit the definitions of our more extreme counterparts! (myself included).
The Hwange Birder
No comments:
Post a Comment