Dikhololo weekend

DIKHOLOLO WEEKEND

The past weekend I went with some old work colleagues to Dikhololo. It was really a birding/wildlife paradise… just sad that we couldn’t take more time birding. Furthermore, I have been thinking of making this blog not just about birds like in the past, but throw some wildlife pictures in as well. Dikhololo was just so abundant with wildlife, that one can’t help admiring everything!

We arrived the Friday afternoon after a VERY busy week at work for the well deserved weekend away. On our way to Dikhololo I spotted a Lilac-breasted roller next to the road…and that is how far that went because the rest of the time I was fast asleep of NO sleep the night before (ref: 1st sentence in this paragraph :)).

Arriving, we settled into our chalet and walked around the resort getting to know where all the relaxation and entertainment areas were. The evening we had a very delicious dinner catered by the resort at one of many entertainment lapas. I started to talk to one of my old colleagues that’s also interested in bird watching (o yes!...she, her husband and I were the only ones by the way). We arranged to meet each other 6:30 the next morning to check out the birds in the region. Well, it couldn’t be that difficult…

The next morning after ‘n good nights rest and not having slept for 40 hours before that, believe it or not, I got up in time. Getting up early can be really rewarding, not only because the animals are more active, but because of the beautiful sunrise:

Driving we stopped several times for a couple of LBJ’s we eventually couldn’t identify (and believe me we did try). Further along the dirt road we came across several hornbills. There were Greybilled-, Yellowbilled- and Redbilled hornbills in very close proximity to each other:

Golden-breasted buntings were all over the place! I had little sightings of this bird, but this morning I made up for that one:

After giving up nearly all hope to see a new bird, we spotted a Chestnut-vented Tit-Babbler (if you think thats a tricky name, try pronouncing its afrikaans name... a "bosveldtjeriktik"). Other sightings were Black-headed oriole, Redbilled Woodhoopoe, Fiscal Flycatcher and the Crested francolin:

We decided to park next to the road and walk into the bushes along the buck trials. As we were focusing on seeing our next special birdie… we suddenly noticed 4 rather odd looking things about 5 meters in front of us. It was two giraffes!! The bushes were quite thick, but I did manage to get some close-up shots of these two beautiful animals:
After this close encounter experience, we continued along the road with the 4x4 and came across other people very exited telling us about a “Swartwitpens” they just sighted further into the bushes. While I was still silently figuring out if a “Swartwitpens” is a bird, snake, flower or antelope (ok, I must admit, I didn’t know everything about animals), we followed their directions. We finally arrived at the mystery animal and yes, it is an antelope…and a very scarce one as well. It is known as a Sable antelope in English:

Going along, we noticed a lot of zebra’s and wildebeest along the way:

We returned back to the chalets after a very exiting morning for breakfast. The rest of the day we pretty much just were lazy, relaxed in the spa and watched the guys playing squash and tennis.

Just before sunset a couple of us strolled along the road to a dam close by our chalet. There was a very nicely constructed birding hide and to my surprise the sighting of three pied kingfishers and a green-backed heron got all the non-birders (which were everyone except me) there very exited. The kingfishers were catching some dinner and for a person who doesn’t notice birds at all, this can be very interesting. The green backed heron were also strolling around foraging in the shallow waters. It was an issue identifying him because of the bad light and distance:

The weekend was very relaxing and with some quality game and bird watching, we came back Sunday morning ready to take on a fresh week (and we hope that lasts:)).