Still in Swellendam

Today was our last day in Swellendam.  

Last night was the shortest and smallest partial lunar eclipse of the century.  Only the bottom left hand corner of the moon fell in the suns shadow.  I had a front row seat from the stoep of the Impangele Guesthouse where we are staying and enjoyed the beautiful warm evening with a glass of wine and my favourite tunes playing on my iPad while viewing the eclipse.  Very relaxing after a hard long day in the field.  Fortunately I am a person who enjoys my own company and my own thoughts.

Today we only had two vantage points and 3 walk transects to do before our bat transect.   We spotted a pair of Karoo Korhaan again today, in the same place we saw the single one yesterday so either he has found a mate really quickly (doubtful) or the mate was hiding from us yesterday.  Either way, I'm happy that he has a friend as they are not meant to be alone, much like us humans.

While driving from one place to another, we also came across a party of 3 Blue Cranes and watched one of them displaying to the others, with the odd behaviour of throwing large tufts of grass up in the air before opening its wings wide and doing the well-known display dance.  I tried to get a pic of this behaviour but true to form, they stop doing what ever was interesting as soon as the car stops!

In case you were wondering, this gives you an idea of where we stand.  This is called a vantage point.  We stand here for a one hour session.  Our vehicle has the data sheets and maps inside as it is usually quite windy... coz it is a wind farm, after all.  Our spotting scope is up and ready for action and we spend an hour here looking all around us for signs of large terrestrial birds or raptors flying within eye-shot.  Today we spotted Ludwigs Bustard, Egyptian Geese, many many African Sacred Ibis, Black-headed Herons and Black Harrier.

Each of these gets recorded on a data sheet and their flight path is recorded on a grid map for easy reference.

Me and my spotter.... 

And when I get home to the Impangele Guesthouse, my little friend is always there to greet me.  He has been living in the Zebra room for some months now.  It is a gecko but not sure which one, still waiting for the Virtual Museum to tell me.

Going home for a few days tomorrow.  See you next week.

PS - Eugene gave me a copy of a pic he took of the Cape Cobra we spotted from a vantage point on the Zen site in Gouda last week.  The cobra was down a hole and kept peeking his head out to see what was going on above ground.  Every time we got close he would slip back down his protected hole but he would stick his head out again pretty soon when he felt the coast was clear.  A very pretty snake indeed.