After quite a few beers last night watching the football I felt a tad groggy this morning. I only had two hours spare this morning to go through the various salt pans before taking a Dolphin trip out into the bay. The usual Waders were around including Little Stints and a couple more Damara Terns, but most unexpected was a Black-backed Jackal patrolling the sand dunes.
The Dolphin tour lasted until midday and my top target here was to see a Benguela Dolphin. However the choppy sea wasn’t ideal and annoyingly we didn’t see any. Bottle-nosed Dolphins did however show very well and to celebrate this the skipper brought out some shot glasses with some type of liquor. I wouldn’t say that was worthy of a celebration but I joined in anyway and perhaps over indulged. More Damara Terns were seen, picked up as ever by their distinctive call, and it was great to see some Crowned Cormorants amongst the many Cape Cornorants. A Great White Pelican joined me and others on the boat, and it’s the first and hopefully the last time I’ve been slapped in the face by a Pelican. The alcoholic tour ended with some sparkling wine!!
Despite being the heat of the day I was keen to see Namibia’s only endemic bird. This meant a half hour drive to Rooibank. Thankfully a good breeze was blowing and after only 45 minutes I found a superb Dune Lark amongst the sparsely vegetated dunes. A massive relief and I stayed with it for some time as it allowed close approach. Not expecting to find one so quickly I opted to head back to the car, via nearly stepping on a Namibian Sand Snake and finding another Dune Lark, and go for another Lark species, this being north of Swakopmund. Many people struggle to see Gray’s Lark or spend many an hour trying to find a group. It was a risk but I went for it, and arriving at a suitable area I set off thinking to myself that I’ll never find one in this vast habitat. No more then one minute later I heard some Gray’s Larks calling, and without any effort I had found a group of five birds. A complete fluke, and five minutes later the birds had ran off and I drove back to the hotel where it was now foggy.
A very low species list today due to being in a very deprived habitat. But what you do see is generally very good.
Highlights are as follows:
Great White Pelican - 20
Cape Gannet - 10
Crowned Cormorant - 8
Cape Cormorant - 300
Little Stint - 15
Greater Crested Tern - 25
Damara Tern - 7
Red-faced Mousebird - 1
GRAY’S LARK - 4
DUNE LARK - 2
Greater Striped Swallow - 3
Black-chested Prinia - 3
Cape Sparrow - 10
Southern Masked Weaver - 2
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| Chestnut-banded Plover at Walvis Bay |
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| Cape Gannet at sea |
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| Greater Crested Tern at sea |
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| Great White Pelican at sea |
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| Dune Lark at Rooibank |
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| Gray's Lark north of Swakopmund |
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| Hartlaub's Gull south of Swakopmund |
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Dune Lark habitat at the northern tip
of its range
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The trail of a
Namibian Sand Snake
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| Gray's Lark habitat stretching for miles |
