{"id":5040,"date":"2011-08-15T11:21:39","date_gmt":"2011-08-15T15:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/?p=5040"},"modified":"2025-06-06T11:32:01","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T15:32:01","slug":"cape-town-wildlife-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/cape-town-wildlife-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Cape Town wildlife III"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is the third post in my monthly series on the fascinating nature I encounter here in South Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It turns out that our new house is just a few minutes&#8217; walk from the Liesbeeck River, which is full of waterbirds. This is where I saw the <a href=\"\/blog\/kingfisher-crochet-pattern\/\">kingfisher<\/a> you may remember from a few months back. Look how lovely it is!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_liesbeeckriver.jpg\" alt=\"liesbeeck river\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I think the rest of these pictures will speak for themselves, so I&#8217;ll keep my commentary short and sweet. Just remember that it&#8217;s the middle of winter here at the moment and, while it&#8217;s not sunny like this every day, you can see (above) how beautiful it is here when the sun does come out! Enjoy&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_egyptiangeese.jpg\" alt=\"egyptian goose family\" \/><br \/>\nA family of Egyptian Geese &#8211; these are the common geese that you see everywhere here (makes a change from Canada Geese!) They have distinctive red patches around their eyes and honk very loudly. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_blacksmithplover.jpg\" alt=\"blacksmith plovers\" \/><br \/>\nHere&#8217;s a pair of Blacksmith Plovers (or Lapwings) &#8211; I took more photos, but they all involved, ahem, mating&#8230; so you get the boring family-safe photo here \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_hadedaibis2.jpg\" alt=\"hadeda ibis\" \/><br \/>\nI love this photo of a Hadeda Ibis &#8211; look at the iridescence on the wing.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_sacredibis.jpg\" alt=\"african sacred ibis\" \/><br \/>\nThese are a different type of ibis: the African Sacred Ibis.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_hartlaubsgull.jpg\" alt=\"hartlaub's gull\" \/><br \/>\nWe see two common types of gull; this cute little Hartlaub&#8217;s Gull, and&#8230; <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_kelpgulls.jpg\" alt=\"kelpgulls\" \/><br \/>\n&#8230; the much larger Kelp Gulls. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_littleegret.jpg\" alt=\"little egret\" \/><br \/>\nAnd two types of egret! Here&#8217;s a Little Egret (note the yellow feet)&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_cattleegret.jpg\" alt=\"cattle egret\" \/><br \/>\n&#8230;and a Cattle Egret. See the buff-coloured plumes? That&#8217;s breeding plumage; the feathers are all white the rest of the year.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_africandarter.jpg\" alt=\"african darter\" \/><br \/>\nAt first I thought this bird was a cormorant, but it&#8217;s actually an African Darter drying its wings after swimming (it swims with its entire body underwater). <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_whitebreastedcormorant.jpg\" alt=\"whitebreasted cormorant\" \/><br \/>\nHere&#8217;s a real cormorant (a Whitebreasted Cormorant). Now I see them together, they don&#8217;t look very similar at all&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/sa_images\/sa_tablemountain.jpg\" alt=\"tablemountain\" \/><br \/>\nAnd a gratuitously scenic shot to end with: Table Mountain (taken from the riverbank). <\/p>\n<p>I hope you enjoyed this month&#8217;s African interlude! Are you bored yet, or shall I keep going with these wildlife posts? I have lots more I can show you, but only if you&#8217;re interested&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the third post in my monthly series on the fascinating nature I encounter here in South Africa. It turns out that our new house is just a few minutes&#8217; walk from the Liesbeeck River, which is full of waterbirds. This is where I saw the kingfisher you may remember from a few months [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5040"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25105,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions\/25105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}