Team Hamerkop are from left: Lourens Grobler, Johan Eksteen, Duncan McKenzie and Ehren Eksteen.
Every year, during Birdlife South Africa’s Birding Big Day, team “Hamerkop” lands with a helicopter in the high lying grasslands on Mountainlands. This is the quickest way for them to get from the Kruger National Park/Malalane area to Mountainlands in this 24 hour competition. There, they hope to see or hear rare and elusive grassland birds to add to their list, before proceeding by vehicle to their next destination. On Saturday, 2 December, there was a sudden change of circumstances as the track leading to their pick up point was not accessible. The helicopter had to divert to lower lying grasslands. And even with this change, team Hamerkop came out tops in Mpumalanga having recorded 325 unique bird species.
The Common Newbies are from left: Oliver Lubbe. Konner Lubbe, Tom Mountain, Shayne Mountain and Oliver Mountain.
Team “The Common Newbies”, consisting of Barberton school children, with the guidance of Barberton Bird Club’s Roland Jones, also visited Mountainlands as part of their birding route. According to Roland their knowledge of birds was amazing and it was wonderful to see how the boys worked together to identify birds. They recorded 139 bird species for the day.
All in all 509 bird species consisting of 8597 records were recorded for Mpumalanga during the competition.
