Mon, Aug 24 - Birding Skittykloof

I Today is the day to drive out from Kagga Kamma about 50 miles to look for some specialty birds in this area, but at lower elevations.
Near Kagga Kamma

 KK is at about 3500' and Bob has all the birds here, so we drove down off the  plateau to about 1500'.  We stopped at a famous picnic area (famous in the birding world, that is!). It is located on a small stream, near the bottom of the plateau, and consists of five concrete tables with four concrete stools around each one.  It would be quite nice if there weren't so much trash. One thing that would improve So Africa a lot is a beverage container deposit; if people could get a Rand, or two, for turning in a bottle, they wouldn't be so ready to toss and break them!
Aloe comosa
It was clear and lovely, in the mid 60s, but quite windy.  The dominate plant here is a very vicious acacia thorn tree with spikes about 2" long.  When it is waving about it is difficult to see the birds hiding within and is also easy to get snagged by a thorn.  There is also a rare aloe, the Aloe comosa, which is found only here and made a pretty scene with the red rocks and purple ice plant.  The majority of the birds in the picnic grounds are the Cape and Masked Weavers, which are fascinating to watch as they weave their nests, but we have seen them from day one!   We finally spotted the feisty little black and white Prewit Batis, a new life bird.

Our Prewit Batis

We drove on into the driest part of SA on the longest road without a town in the country and you could see why.  It looked pretty bleak, but when we stopped to bird, and we really looked at the plants, we could see that the scrubby low vegetation consisted of euphorbias, ice plants and other succulents, plus tiny daisies and it was really interesting.





We turned down P2250, a highly rated road in Bob's bird finding book, but with the wind, the birds were hunkering down and we saw very few, just an ostrich that ran along side us for a while at 35 km/hr and some Springbok.
Tankwa Padstal Store
We started back at 2 PM, stopping at a wild and crazy store run by an Afrikaner in dreadlocks who sells food, tourist items, and all the odds and ends that the ranchers might need.  Bob got a Fanta and I bought a bottle of his homemade ginger beer which he warned me to open very slowly over 15 minutes, or it would explode!  We drove back to the picnic spot to check it out once more and I finally had the top off of the bottle without it overflowing. I had hoped that it would be the best ginger beer of my life, but unfortunately it was really awful - I couldn't drink it and was very glad that I was far away from the store, so as not to insult my wild friend!

We got back to Kagga Kamma at 4:30 and found our small parking area  blocked by a large Toyota van. The nice man in Hut #2 turned out to be the driver for a bunch of tourists who are spending the night in the caves above.  He maneuvered his van up onto his terrace so we could get by and remarked how he couldn't stand it there because it was so peaceful and quiet - he's used to  traffic and the noise of a lot of people!

We went over to the dining room at seven and had a really good dinner of veggie soup and prawn curry, medium, not hot, and a bottle of Cederberg Sauvignon Blanc.  We leave tomorrow for the south coast of SA.  I could have used another day here to take the rock art tour or a trip on the rough dirt roads on the little motorized 4-wheel bikes!  This resort is really well designed and well run.

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