Well folks - its been a while since I last posted anything here - in the interim we had a good long weekend up in the Mountain Zebra National Park and I had a 'not so nice' week on oxygen in the Port Alfred Hospital getting over a bout of Covid that metastasized into pneumonia (hope I used that word in the correct sense), while Pat managed to dodge the pneumonia bullet, but was nevertheless quite ill (what a strong woman she is).
After months of dryness with hardly more than a sprinkle of drizzle every now and then Bathurst was finally blessed with 20mm of good soaking rain this week. Isn’t it amazing what just a few drops of rain can do? Suddenly one wakes up to a garden full of smiling plants - the dust of weeks washed off their leaves and the very early spring flowers suddenly bright with colour.
The day after the rain too there were birds everywhere in our garden - in the Bohemia and the large Coral tree especially. It would seem that the sunshine had given them the opportunity to dry out after the deluge, and everywhere there were pairs of chicks. I think that they were all a little beyond fledging, but seemingly happy to get out of damp or sodden nests and into the warmth of the sun rather than waiting at home for mum and dad to bring home the bacon.
Within the time it took me to walk around the garden I spotted a pair of Dark-capped Bulbul chicks - apparently still very young. Right next to them in the Bohemia were a pair of Black-collared Barbet chicks and a few (evidently), quite young Speckled Mousebirds, two of whom I managed to capture fighting over the petal of a flower and falling out of the tree just as naughty youngsters might do.
In the Coral tree I found two young Brown-hooded Kingfishers that I had hoped might eventually appear as I knew where their nest was but was unable to access it due to the heavy undergrowth at the bottom of our garden.
Brown-hooded Kingfisher youngsters (Brothers?)
Also in the Coral and the Bohemia were any number of young Weavers and Drongos watching and learning from their parents, as well as any number of Southern Double-collared Sunbird youngsters flitting about with their parents from flower to flower.
Down on the ground there were doves everywhere, and a couple of rather skittish Red-necked Spurfowls that simply wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to get a decent shot without blurring some part of their body. Our resident Ha-Da-Da couple were also down there making the most of the suddenly softened soil in search of those delicacies that the hard-baked ground had hidden from them for so long. Joining the Ha-Da-Da’s were a good few African Hoopoes also taking advantage of the now softened earth, while in at least three different locations their always noisy Green Wood-Hoopoe cousins (the Inhlekabafazi), were cackling like crazy and earning the reputation that their African name describes ….. the laughter of women!
Up in the Coral too, was a Knysna Woodpecker that frustrated me horribly as it hopped about from branch to branch in search of its favorite delicacies, barely affording me a chance to get properly focused and pull the trigger - fortunately I managed to get a couple of nice shots here and there.
The flighty little Knysna Woodpecker
Aside from all these wonderful benefits of the rain there were also the more mundane ones like seeing York Road’s dust washed off our roof and walls …………. and while the grass suddenly looks a whole lot greener, it also tells me that I had better start mowing before it becomes a real chore again.
Our reservoir level went up by roughly 50mm, which, using the formula I found on Google (V=πr2h=π·2.52·0.05≈0.98175), means - I think - that we have close to a thousand liters or water available that we didn’t have last week ….. which is good - right?
Sooooooo - let’s hope that we get more of the same sooner rather than later, and that Pat’s garden can really begin to benefit in preparation for Spring.
