Spotted Gully Shark

A trip to the peninsula after a spell of cold water yielded a surprise, a Spotted Gully Shark! Thought to have made it's way to the estuary in search of warmer water, it ended up close to shore and Shirley and I were able to see it up close and personal!

Spotted Gully Shark.

Sedgefield walk

Shirley and I joined the Lakes Bird Club on the first walk of the season to survey the Sedgefield Oystercatchers. It was an opportunity for the two of us to go to a new area and make some new contacts. We made the long trek and landed in a spectacular place! There was a large group of interesting people that were gathered, and it was a good walk, and we managed to find a few nests. All in all a productive and thoroughly enjoyable day!

Spot the nesting oystercatcher!

Not so easy to find!

A lion.

A whale bone, perhaps from a humpback.

To put the size of the blow-hole in perspective!

The underside of a washed up sea urchin.

A large octopus rescued from a shrinking rock pool.

A beautiful beach indeed!

Peninsula

A day out after the storm.

The beach after heavy rains and rough seas, the colony minus a few nests.

Waiting for the other brother to hatch.

A hatched egg shell.

Three Sacred Ibis chicks.. a large clutch.

A very protective momma.

A little too big to hide in the bushes!

Lookout

An interesting day out on Lookout.

Harold the crab..

... has two legs!

Friends?

A gull which has been incubating 2 gull and 3 goose eggs!

Quest for Africa

A group of young men from Quest Africa joined the Nature’s Valley Trust team for a few days to experience what they get up to. Part of that was joining Shirley and I on the beach where we managed to trap both a gull and an oystercatcher to demonstrate ringing, as well as show the species differences. I also benefitted from a few hours of regurgitated pellet dissections, yay! On their last day Shirley and I joined them for a walk on part of the Otter Trail, amazing!

A view along the walk in Nature's Valley.

The viewpoint looking over Nature's Valley.

Horse and carriage

A beautiful day out at Main beach advertising T'Niqua Stable Inn. Storm and Mandla in top form!

How beautiful!

A motor boat!

Plett is a place of generous people! We have been given a boat and bought a new Parsun motor for an amazingly low price! The boat is courtesy of Louis Ollerman and the motor is from Parsun Southern Cape. Errol, Kenny and Butch from Parsun have been so helpful and kept Shirley and I high and dry and moving forward on the water! Even going so far as to rescue me on the estuary when I ran out of petrol (new boater stupidity!). I have been having so much fun with the boat, and it saves Shirley and I from paddling a heavily laden canoe to the peninsula and back!

Paddling out past weeds that would clog the new motor.

And we're off!

Trips to the peninsula have just become so much easier!

Post-trip maintenance instructions.

Always remember to close the air valve and turn the petrol off!

Errol, myself and Louis.

Errol, myself and Kenny.

More eggs

More interesting eggs!

A mini egg!

Interesting colouration.

There are a few eggs in the colony with paler colours.

The aftermath of a day in the field.

Oystercatchers!

The first Oystercatcher nest has been found, with 2 eggs! Another important part of Shirley’s project has begun! Starting with catching and ringing the pair. Interestingly, the first nest was found on lookout beach, the site with the highest anthropogenic disturbance. We managed to catch one of the pair, but the second individual was not going to go into the trap. It was such a pleasure ringing the oystercatcher, compared to the gulls which bite and struggle and all too often cover us in poo. I look forward to ringing more of these birds, and hopefully we will find more nests.

The oystercatcher eggs.

The first trapped bird of the season!

Shirley with her first African Black Oystercatcher!

Lookout

Another day out at the Lookout colony.

Evidence of eating octopus.

The birds do not like us in the colony. Photo by Mark Brown.

And definitely don't like me fiddling with their eggs. Photo by Mark Brown.

Chicks

The first chicks have hatched! They are so precious, so cute and fluffy! Soon the site will be teeming with mobile fluffballs which in due time will turn into squawking replicas of their parents.

Incubation - you're doing it wrong.

A just-hatched chick, almost out of the egg.

All dried out and downy.

They are precious creatures.

I got distracted..

GPS logger

We have our first GPS logger back! I was quite glad to get it back, catching the bird was a worry as well as the concern about whether the logger would stay on, but we got it! The data from it is so interesting; the bird spent a lot of time at the dump and we got no GPS points out at sea. The start of an interesting story!

The logger stayed on!

A very interesting story of the bird's movements.

Interesting eggs

The eggs come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colouration.