Bird watching off to a flying start with special sighting

Bird watching walk at Likweti Bushveld Farm Estate led by international bird guide, Marc Cronje: 12 January 2025

What a wonderful way to begin the year with our first bird walk at Likweti Bushveld Farm Estate for 2025. The area has had some much-needed rain, and the birds were all out and about enjoying all the food available, displaying for mates and building nests. The Village and Southern Masked Weavers building their nests near the entrance gate entertained us as soon as we got out the cars. They were soon joined by a Diederik Cuckoo hanging around the nests – the weavers are one of the hosts of the Cuckoo. With the Diederik Cuckoo being a brood parasite, the female was waiting to get a gap to investigate a potential nest to use to lay her egg in. The female will enter the hosts nest, take the egg out and fly off with the hosts egg, she may eat it or just discard it and then lay her egg in the nest of the host.

Southern Masked Weaver

Our group of nine enthusiastic bird watchers enjoyed some excellent birds from the start of the walk, with great sights of an African Green Pigeon out in the open. The call of a Long-crested Eagle got my attention and soon we had good views of a female perched up nearby. With it being summer, all the Widowbirds and Bishops are showing their incredible breeding plumage, and on the walk, we had good sightings of Red-collared Widowbird, Fan-tailed Widowbird, Southern Red Bishop and White-winged Widowbird. A bit further into the walk we had a great sighting of one of the Lowvelds stunning summer migrants, the Woodland Kingfisher showing its electric blue colours. This bird is an intra-African migrant to our area. A displaying Croaking Cisticola was a treat to all and was a life bird for most of the group.

As we continued with the walk the birds just kept on coming and we were lucky to observe the resident Red-throated Wryneck investigating a Barbet hole, the European Bee-eaters also gave us some wonderful views. It is amazing to think that these birds migrate to us all the way from Spain. A noteworthy sighting was having both the male and female Black Cuckooshrikes putting on a show and we could clearly see the differences between the male and female.

Some other notable sightings from the walk included African Golden Weaver, Black-headed Oriole, Arrow-marked Babbler, Crested Barbet (which I affectionately call the “Picasso Bird”), Streaky-headed Seedeater, African Hoopoe, Lesser Honeyguide in the open, Bearded Woodpecker in the open, Orange-breasted Bushshrike and a Willow Warbler. This is a Palearctic migrant to the Lowveld and the species breed from Ireland east and north through Europe to Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Our birding adventure continued with us visiting one of the dams on the property, here we had sightings of the Yellow-throated Longclaw, White-fronted Bee-eater, Pied Kingfisher, Rufous-naped Lark, Neddicky, Thick-billed Weaver, Black Cuckoo, White-faced Whisteling Duck and Southern Boubou. A highlight was having a Cape Grassbird perch in the open for us. This is a very special bird to see as the species is endemic to South Africa.

Great-spotted Cuckoo

Just before concluding our walk, I heard the distinctive loud crass and raucous chattering and cackling sounds of a Great-spotted Cuckoo. We had brief views of the bird in flight. This was the first recorded sighting of the Great-spotted Cuckoo at Likweti Bushveld Farm Estate and a very unexpected surprise.

We all enjoyed a truly magnificent morning of birding at Likweti Bushveld Farm Estate, and we feel fortunate to have such incredible birding opportunities in the Lowveld. It’s always worth taking the time to appreciate the amazing birdlife here.

In total, we spotted 86 species during our morning walk on this beautiful estate.

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