Wrapping up Gouda

This week saw us at the pointy end of another two of our sites.  They are two sites directly along side each other, both situated near the town of Gouda. This was our last session.  These sites are not all that exciting but we do sometimes find some interesting things along the way.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived was how green everything was.  It was an amazing contrast to the dry and dusty Springfontein of last week. Shallow ephemeral pans were everywhere, following good rains and ducks were having a wonderful time in them.  Spur-winged Geese and Red-billed Teal were seen in every field.  All the water bodies that were as dry as a bone at my last visit were now brimming over with water and devoid of waterfowl, mainly because they are too full and the birds are preferring to use the shallow pans in the fields.  

The roads on the farms are not good at the best of times, but after all the rain, they are veritable lakes!  Thank goodness we have good 4x4's to get us through this.  This is a road, believe it or not!

With all the great rain, we were very happy to see that the flowers were in full bloom. We are so blessed to have such amazing wild flora in this little part of the world and they just brighten up the whole site beautifully.

The site covers two farms, one of which is still a fully functional farm with animals and crops.  The canola fields are in full bloom and it looks so amazing to see huge expanses of bright yellow as far as the eye can see.  In fields opposite, the wheat is half grown and beautifully bright green.  Really a spectacle.

Insects were in abundance and my favourite was this lovely hairy caterpillar with the bright orange eyes.  No idea what the species is but very pretty.

On one of our walk transects we came across two dead crows, this being one of them.  They were quite close to each other and we think it is possible that someone shot them.  They are very clever birds and don't easily die by flying into things. It has already been predated on, possibly by its own species. Pied crows are the bane of our life.  They are very abundant on the wind farms and we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time recording them and drawing their routes when they are actually one of the species (all Corvids actually) that are least affected by wind turbines due to them being very clever and being able to avoid the blades quite well.

A surprise find on our drive transect was this White Stork.  It was all alone, strange for a bird usually found in flocks, and it either comes from one of the those flocks that reside permanently here in the Western Cape, or it is back in the country very early from its summer in Europe.  The Tygerberg Zoo which closed a few months ago had a flock that lived there permanently and they may have dispersed now that the zoo is no longer there.

At one of our vantage points which also had a walk transect, we were confronted by a solitary male Common Ostrich who was not happy with our presence.  He spotted us from quite far away and immediately started jogging towards us at quite a pace.  We stood and watched him while he stopped periodically to go down on his haunches and give us his dominance display before standing up and continuing on his quick jog towards us.  A very low fence was all that kept his large kicking toe from getting to us.  We were quite nervous as he got really close and we decided to retreat to the car for safety.  Mr Ostrich arrived right next to us and flapped his wings at us clearly showing his unhappiness with us being in his area.  He stayed with us for the whole session and when we went back later for our walk, he was still there and gave us a repeat performance.  There were no females anywhere around so not quite sure why he was so aggressive but we played it safe and didn't take any chances with him.

On the third day we found this group of trucks parked on the side of the road between the Tulbagh pass and Wellington.  We had to go down and ask them where they were off to because it was pretty obvious that they were carrying a wind turbine, the very first one that I have seen on the road!  We were debating whether or not they were coming to our wind farm at Gouda which definitely was no where near ready to receive them, being that no roads have been made nor any platforms laid as yet.  But, apparently, they were destined for the Caledon wind farm, the closest one to my home town of Franschhoek. Strangely, these trucks were still parked on the side of the road when we left two days later!

Apparently it takes 8 of these flat bed trucks to bring in one turbine.  These four trucks are bringing only the shaft of the turbine.  The three blades and the hub were not there.

On our last day, at our last vantage point, we were in for a treat.  Not only were there White-faced Whistling Ducks on the dam (which are not common for this area), but we had an African Fish Eagle screaming above our heads as it was being mobbed by Pied Crows and then we heard an almighty racket which I thought was a farm worker moving a large metal object very noisily. Eugene enlightened me that it was in fact the sound of a Lanner Falcon breaking just before trying to snatch a dove from a tree branch after coming down from a very high altitude at break-neck speed.  Wow, that was a first for me.  Who knew that a small sleek falcon could make such a roar with its feathers. Truly spectacular.  The falcon didn't get his prey, by the way, and we ran from side to side following the action as he chased the poor dove all over the sky.  The dove seemed to live to see another day.

And that brought us to the end of bird and bat monitoring on this Gouda site. We will be back soon though, as we have a new smaller site in the same area that we have just started.  So it's not good-bye altogether, just a farewell for now.