Back to the city

 The day before I left Bonamanzi, I took a drive through Hluhluwe and Mfolozi and  just after Hilltop Camp got stuck behind someone who was driving very erratically.  When he put on brakes I decided to overtake but on moving into the right lane, whoops.......

......three young males were blocking the road.  A very rare sighting in Hluhluwe as the bush is so thick.  Later in the Corridor between the two parks, a healthy herd of about 30 ellies....................

.............and headed up towards Coronation Gate, an old dagga boy giving that 1000 yard stare!

Just before Mpila Camp Madonna and child, not a bad start.

The black monkey thorns Senagalia burkeii - black refers to the bark - were just coming into leaf which turned them a delightful shade of lime green.

Ever seen rhino Siamese twins?  Really great to see there are still some present in what was the site originally set aside for their preservation when last their numbers came perilously close to extinction.

Always great to welcome the yellow-billed kites back from their winter rambles north of the Equator.

Returning to Hluhluwe, even though a vast area is still pristine, mans presence is visible more and more on the borders, with the inevitable conflicts and incursions that will ultimately lead to invasion, which I hopefully will never see. 

Back in Kloof, a friend invited me round for lunch and her charming indigenous garden was an absolute bird magnet.  A thick-billed weaver made good use of the pliers attached to it's head to open sunflower seeds......

......while Cape white-eyes used the bathing facilities....................

.................and green twinspots made certain that the seeds displaced from the feeder didn't go to waste.  Unfortunately the males weren't very obliging but the females are almost as pretty.

Back in the Turner's marvelous garden, I was awoken one morning by a string of Piet-my-vrous which announced the presence of a red-chested cuckoo.  Ask any birder just how difficult this noisy bird is to find and you''l appreciate how astonished I was to see him in the almost bare branches of a large croton.

 A few mornings later it was the turn of not one, not two but three Narina trogons all trying to outdo one another.

While at Bonamanzi, I found a dead example of the sand ivory and asked the owner for==] permission to get a sample of the heart wood for Richard Boon.  He happily lent me his chain saw and I managed to get a reasonable size piece which I have since sanded.  Though the outer layers have been thoroughly bored by insects the inner ones show a range of colours that are most pleasing.

In nearby Hillcrest is the reserve that rekindled an interest in birds in the late 80's, Springside.  It is also where we held a memorial gathering for Jo and a visit is basically compulsory.

While birds are not plentiful there are always things of interest.  First up a minute bronze mannikin disturbed by my presence flew up into a fig tree.

Next a wild pomegranate Burchellia bubalina with a more orange colour................

.......than usual.  Perhaps because it was in the shade.

Overhead a lone woolly-necked stork gaining altitude on a thermal...............

..............which was also assisting a common buzzard, with it's distinctive black-white-brown under-wing pattern.

A favourite spot of ours was a bench by the river which sports a variety of trees that would be ideal for adventurous youngsters to climb, but unfortunately very few people are even aware of it.

Have probably passed this rock many times without noticing it until today, because a ray of sunlight penetrated the canopy and drew attention to it's minute forest of moss.

I kept having to retake a picture of this Doll's powder puff Cyanotis speciosa as it was blurred. it took a while to realise that the petals of the flower are tiny filaments, hence the name.

The black-eyed Susan Thunbergia alata is one of our more famous exports........

.........with dieramas also being popular, this one with an attendant, extraordinarily coloured beetle.  Another photo that took a long time as the long grass-like stems were "blowin' in the wind"!

The Grassland clerodendron C. triphyllum, has a weirdly shaped flower and prominent stamens of and the scientific name presumably refers to it's three petals.

Driving into Durban there were areas of the median which had a smoky blue hue, which I assumed were Wood's aristea  A. woodii and I eventually found a field of them in a little grassland reserve nearby.  Quite a sight.

Also visited Pigeon Valley where the type specimen of Delagorgue's or as it's now known eastern bronze-naped pigeon was shot, hence the name.  The pigeons are no longer in residence as they did not take kindly to urbanization but the area also affords protection to some towering specimens of Natal elm Celtis mildbraedii. which is extremely rare in the wild.

There are some impressive specimens of the fluted milkwood Chrysophyllum veridifolium, whose name is almost as convoluted as it's trunk.

An invite from cousin Sue and her husband Giles saw me overnighting at the swish Dunkirk Estate on the north coast, where I awoke to this scene and a plethora of bird calls.

There are a pair of robins that could be nesting near the caravan and one morning I heard a peculiar noise that I thought could be a bulbul, but there were a few extra notes thrown into the mix.  It eventually got close enough to actually see one of them and it's beak was moving .  Red-capped or Natal robin-chats are notorious mimics but I'd never before heard this particular noise and when I went out to get a photo all was revealed.

A little stray had been hanging around for a week or two and it was so thin that I started leaving out scraps.  Directly under the robin sat Skwag, as she has now become, positively drooling at the prospect of a robin breakfast.  The bird makes the sound whenever she is around and it's obviously a warning to it's mate.

Couldn't resist and though he wasn't driving, he looks like he'd take it terribly seriously!

Took a ride down to the beach near Virginia and found the spot where I tried unsucessfully to learn how to kite board.  Appears to be no shortage of people who have cracked it though!