Kruger NP 10/22-10/24--COMB DUCK, KORI BUSTARD, BLACK CRAKE, DOUBLE-BANDED SANDGROUSE, SOUTHERN GROUND-HORNBILL, PEARL-SPOTTED OWLET + 25 More Life Birds

SOUTHERN GROUND-HORNBILL

The last 3 days were a frenzy of birding. We moved camp twice--first to Olifant Camp and finally to Satara Camp. With 7 people, this entail a lot of picking up and going. During the day (and one night) we birded constantly, driving the roads, stopping at blinds, standing on bridges overlooking rivers.

Our first night in Olifant, after dinner, Kim guided the group around the darkened streets, flashing his light into trees while playing the tape of the PEARL-SPOTTED OWLET. We didn't find one, but heard one respond, eventually, distantly. It was such a soft call that I didn't even bother to count it. Next morning, as we were driving along at speed, Kim called out "STOP." He had found an owlet high in a bare tree. We backed up and took pictures at our leisure. The owlet had no interest in us or in moving.

We found the odd COMB DUCK with its ungainly appendage at one of the watering holes off the road. It was quite distant, but distinct. The hen is on the right. The incredibly ugly geese flanking the drake are Egyptian Geese. Hardly a day went by that we didn't find these geese. 
At the Lake Panic hide, I recouped a bird I missed in Wakkerstroom. There, while everyone else apparently saw a clearly as they could, a BLACK CRAKE, I missed the bird, despite many precise and conflicting directions.  However, at the hide I saw one "naked eye." When Shari saw the bird, not knowing I was already looking at it, she started giving me directions that led me to a stick in the water. You're not allowed to scream in a hide.

KORI BUSTARD was another exciting find, as was the DOUBLE-BANDED SANDGROUSE we came upon on the side of the road on our last full day there. These are the kinds of birds I came to Africa to see, birds that aren't "replaced" by something else in this hemisphere.

KORI BUSTARD (above)
DOUBLE-BANDED SANDGROUSE (below)

The last life bird I got was at the braai (cookout) we had the last night there--a GOLDEN-TAILED WOODPECKER was roosting in a tree hole right behind one of our huts.

The Wild Melons

Like Brig, when people in another vehicle see you stopped on the road, observing something, they ask what you have. Unlike Brig, 95% of the time if its birds, then they don't care. They came for the big animals. So many times Kim just called out "birds" to a car slowing down and they would glide past us.

In St. Lucia, which seemed like a month ago, some of our group bought carved out gourds from a vendor and here at Kruger, we saw similarly sized fruits growing on low trees and wondered if they were the source of the dried gourds. When we found a bunch of them growing on the side of the road, our guide stopped, explained that these weren't actually gourds at all, but wild melons 

They were pretty neat looking fruits, though my understanding is that melons grow on vines not trees, and we all stopped to examine them more closely and take pictures. Our guide saw a car approaching us and said, "Watch this." As the woman pulled up, we all continued to look intently into the tree.
"What are you seeing?" she asked. "Oh, we're just looking at the wild melons," our guide replied with a completely dead pan. The woman's expression broke all records for going from surprise to aghast to disgust. She drove off quickly and you could just hear her saying to herself "Wild melons, indeed." Our guide, who up until then seemed a reserved young man, was slapping the steering wheel in hilarity as she drove off.  

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The next morning we packed up for the final time, got into the safari vehicle and birded our way out of Kruger into White River, where we transferred to our van and made the 4 hour trip to the Johannesburg airport. 

The trip home was long but uneventful. We were delayed on the ground at Johannesburg for an hour, but I only found out about 12 hours later. I was asleep in my seat before the safety demonstrations were over.