These 2 Secretary birds were having a fight, while a 3rd one, presumably the female was staying put. Secretary birds are not very strong flyers, and the airborn fight happended almost in slow motion, with the birds tumbling down onto the ground as they got hold of each other. The fighting continued on groundlevel, untill the one birdhad enough and flew off
July 2011
A trip to King Williams Town and Hogsback Gave us the opportunity to see the Cape Parrot - with less then a 1000 parrots left in the wild, this must be one of the most endangered endemic birds of South Africa.
November 2010
Winner of 3rd price in the "My Addo" competition with a picture of a Hoopoe!
September 2010: Fattbirder has now added a link to my website on their page for the Eastern Cape: Fattbirder Eastern Cape
May 2010: New layout of the website. I have created photoalbums to make naviagtion for African Birds easier and uploading quicker. Also lots of new pictures.
May 2010: Winner of the Eastern Cape bird photographic competition! This picture of a Lesser Striped Swallow won the competition out of around 350 entries. The competition was held in honour of the 60th anniversary of Birdlife Eastern Cape. It was taken at the Heaven Hotel in the Cwebe/ Dwesa Nature reserve in the Transkei Wild coast.
Some of my other pictures ended up as (highly) recomended:
May 2010:
A year has past and an update is more then overdue . I might not have done so much work on the sit e lately , but I have been in the field a lot. Over the last year I have been able to photograph more then 200 different birds, mostly in the Eastern Cape but also in Pilanesberg and Kwazulu Natal. South Africa is a wonderfull country for birdphotography, there is always something to see and the weather usually cooperates nicely. Although I am now working full time again after passing my veterinary exams which allow me to work in SA, we find plenty of time to go away. I have added more pictures to the site and will try to do more in near future
May 2009:
We have moved to Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The first month was chaotic but now that we have phones , cars and a place to stay things are returning back to normal. My wife works and I spend most of my days studying for the examination in September which will allow me to work here. This leaves me time to go birdingand my lifelist is inceasing steadily. Knysna lourie, Giant Kingfisher, 3-banded Plover are all common local birds, but I had never seen them before, let alone photograph them. We managed to get out into the countryside on weekends away a few times; we spend a long weekend in the Mountain Zebra Park which was beautifull as well as peacefull. We walked 3 1/2 kilometer strech of the ottertrail which I felt for days after (I am certainly not fit enough to do the complete trail) and stayed over in the Tsitsikamma national park. Addo elephant park in just 45 min away and great for a morning visit. All in all it`s great to be here and there is more then enough to see and do to keep us busy.
April 2009:
no news for a while as we have been bussy moving to South Africa! however you can expect many more new pictures in the next months! watch this space...
January 2009: my picture of the egret became runner-up in the anual bird picture competition on birdguides! I was very chuffed!
November 2008
Hundreds of Golden Plover have gathered in the Nene valley to spend the winter and attracted a few peregine falcons and a lot of bird watchers / photographers. I amanaged to get a few shots of one of the falsons, check out my "birds of prey " folder!
October 2008
A holiday to Majorca in the mediterrenean poved succesfull as far as birdwatching was concerned ( not so muchsun however!)
Booted eagle, hoepoe and purple swamphen were among the birds seen. Especially Albufera national park was a good spot with lots of excellent hides and photographic opportunities. Pics are larger in bird folders.
September 2008
Finally a pic of a kingfisher. It`s not brilliant, but it`s a start!
31-08-2008 Update website, lots of new pictures and new lay out.
August 2008
All my hard work has finally paid off, I have won something for the first time ever!
In August this year I won photo of the week on http://www.birdguides.com for my picture of a juvenile little egret that managed to catch a reedwarbler! This happened at Summerleys , where I was in the main hide with a few other people (I know some one else will have exactly the same picture!). We were watching families of reed- and sedge warblers feeding their families as this egret landed near the hide. It starting to look for small fish etc while wading along the shore and shuffling it`s feet. Suddenly it dashed into the reeds. There was a distressing call of a bird , and out it came holding the reedwarbler in it`s beak! This then attracted one of the other egrets , a mature bird , perhaps it`s mom or dad. However the juvenile bird had no intention of sharing it`s prey ( according to Freud it is essential that we split from our parrents to reach full maturity!) and flew off, to eat the warbler on the other shore. What happended to the family of reedwarblers, I do not know.
All pictures on this website : copyright M.F. Ravensberg