Confused Vultures And A Brief Stint In Mozambique

Summer. The season which many in the southern hemisphere look forward to and particularly us South Africans. Why? Well there are of course the obvious reasons such as our incredibly warm temperatures, clear skies, afternoon thundershowers across the interior, fantastic beaches and of course the ever famous water-parks which are generally out of business for a third of the year. However there a certain breed of South Africans who are not bothered at all when it comes to the above, instead much like squirrels store food for the winter, they spend their winter accumulating as much spare cash as they can in their anticipation for the spring and summer months or in other words, rarity season.

Barau's Petrel, an annual rarity off the South African coastline

Here in South Africa the entire concept of "fall out" is a very foreign concept to us and passage migration doesn't occur in the vast amounts it does in Europe for example, causing birders to tackle a piece of coastline for two/three weeks of a transitional season to make sure they get a specific species only present then. Instead we last the winter out in front of fires with more than the necessary amount of clothing on and wait anxiously for Spring and Summer when the migratory species to come to us, whether it's our intra-African migrants from central Africa or our palearctic migrants from Eurasia. This is when the amount of rarities reported in our sub-region reaches an all time high with reports coming in daily of either provincial rarities or national rarities, both of which generate a fair amount of interest among southern African birders. But it is the reports which get sent through to us by the fantastically run Southern African Rare Bird News (SARBN) email system headed "MEGA: BREAKING NEWS" which really get the adrenaline pumping, and two weeks ago it was two of these mails which sent the country into birding chaos. 

There is a nature reserve in Limpopo province called Blouberg and is famous among birders here in South Africa for being home to the countries largest breeding colony of Cape Vulture's with close on 1 000 breeding pairs present but in among these +-2 000 birds is a single southern Africa mega which has been present for more years than I have been a birder, in fact close to the year when I was born, but has always somehow remained extremely elusive and has avoided many the lister's sub-region list, that is until the report came through from SARBN not too long ago. The regions resident Ruppell's Vulture was sighted on a telephone pole on the outskirts of the reserve and subsequently staff at the reserve had reported it nesting with a resident Cape Vulture. This coupled of course with the extremely helpful and supportive reserve staff allowed for birders to get fantastic scope views of the bird and in turn the first few photographs were posted which inevitably caused a chain reaction with birders organizing trips, booking flights and taking 'sick leave'. 

Of course birding being birding and birds being birds a very interesting looking Stint decided to turn up in a flooded soccer field in Maputo, Mozambique. After much speculation, emails backward and forward and the keen eyes of top Mozambican birder Gary Allport, the conclusion was that the interesting looking stint was in fact a Red-necked Stint, the first in the sub-region for over a decade. 

So what to do? 

The Stint was rather erratic and would every second day or so decide to shove off and explore other parts of Maputo unknown to birders. Another problem presented itself in the form of extremely sunny, warm days in the capital which started affecting the size of the puddle in which the stint was feeding, and the third problem being that the Red-necked was foraging among Little's and confirmation of identification could really only be confirmed by photographs which allowed one to examine various feather details the bird showed. The Vulture on the other hand was what seemed to be reliable and it had further been discovered that the bird had a chick....very confused fella indeed! 

We eventually came to the decision that we would tackle the Vulture first and if the Stint had been sighted again we would then drive through to Maputo to try our luck at connecting with it.

So Friday morning came, cars packed and loaded with crucial food supplies and over excited birders and off we went to Blouberg. Upon our arrival at this incredible reserve we were greeted by the sight of fellow birders who seemed to be extremely hot and flustered in the intense Lowveld heat but brimming from cheek-to-cheek with excitement, which could only mean one of two things: they had finally found water or they had seen and enjoyed the Ruppell's, and it was indeed the former of the two. "We've been watching him from dawn this morning till roughly 12:00 when we left the site" were the words spoken to us, causing increased heart rates and more profuse sweating. We jumped back into the car and made haste towards the Vulture colony, arriving at roughly 16:30 with a fast setting sun casting a golden hue among the vultures. After sometime and fantastic eyes on Alan Ridley's part we managed to locate the nest site, but alas no Ruppell's, our adrenaline levels now dropping almost as quickly as the sun. It was thus decided that we would return first thing in the morning in our hope to catch the bird keeping its chick company.

We were rewarded! Not easily of course! A 6.5 hour stakeout was ultimately what was needed and the fact that roughly ten pairs of eyes were constantly trained on the nest site also helped somewhat. At 12:53 the Ruppell's decided to fly into the nest site after what seemed to be a brief foraging session as it then proceeded to feed the chick. After it's crop was emptied it then took flight again at 12:57, a whole four minutes of viewing! What a remarkable vulture and one I have always dreamt of seeing! With the vulture in the bag our groups previous debates as to whether we were going to drive through to Mozambique or not for the Stint or stay and make sure we got the Vulture, thus returning home with at least one 'mega' in the bag was decided for us when Mr Ruppell's flew made an appearance, so into the car we jumped again and off we went to Mozambique. 

Crossing the Komatipoort border at 21:00 at night must have been one of the most pleasurable African border crossings I have ever undergone and most certainly one of the quickest. We were done and dusted within 15 minutes and were on the dark and wet road through to Maputo. We arrived and were greeted in typical Maputo fashion, traffic jams everywhere we turned. Coupled with this our GPS decided to take us to the opposite end of the city where our accommodation was in fact not, which resulted in four very exhausted and hungry birders finally collapsing into bed at 12:15am with the latest news on the stint being that it wasn't seen during the course of the day, the words of Jim Carrey now highly appropriate...b-e-a-uuuuutiful!

The GPS was indicating that our destination was coming up on the left and after rain downfall during the early hours of the morning I couldn't help but wonder how big the puddle had gotten, if it even did. The continuous wall on our left gave way to an open field and to its left-most extremity the famous 'puddle' which had thankfully increased somewhat  in size. We pulled up next to a fellow birder whom we happened to know and no sign of the bir... wait a second...A small, fast feeding, very pale stint was working the puddle as if it were a buffet for one. We all managed to get onto the bird and immediately noted that it was somewhat different in comparison to other stint's we were used to. Then all of a sudden, with a flutter of wings, it flew up and away, ocean-bound. Thankfully a member of our group managed to fire off some shots of the bird before it did its disappearing act and it was these which helped clinch the ID after sending them through to birders who had already seen and witnessed the birds behavior. Along with this we also had a Little Stint fly in soon after and the size difference between the bird we were now looking at and the bird we had been looking at was remarkably obvious with the Little Stint now looking somewhat gigantic in comparison. 

And there we all sat, sipping a celebratory hot chocolate and stuffing our faces with Portuguese deserts, toasting to a fantastic, fun, adrenaline filled weekend and undoubtedly the biggest and most intense twitch I had ever had the privilege of joining: Friday through to Sunday, +-2 000km later and both rarities in the bag in a 24 hour period...the things we do for birds!