WOW!! What a special sighting!!

I was contacted recently by birders that wanted to find the Yellow-throated Sandgrouse. With the Sun City site useless at the moment, I fell back on the Sunflower Fields.

This morning we were on site at 06:00, and started scouring the recently ploughed fields. At one of our stops to search some more, we noted a Temmincks Courser ahead of us on the road verge. Immediately, a young chick showed itself, and ran after its mom. Roughly 20m further on a second adult stood beautifully, surveying the activity. The mother and chick allowed us to stop right next to them (+-5m) and posed quite nicely for some photos.

Adult Temmincks Courser

Temmincks Courser chick

We continued searching the fields for the Sandgrouse in vain. At the end of the road, as we were about to turn around, a male flew in and landed about 100m off the road. As we got out of the vehicle, we disturbed a few birds that fortunately landed again about 40m from us. The excitement was great, as we could see a male and female beautifully. Upon closer inspection, there were another 3 birds following the male continuously. These 3 were more than half the size of the adults, giving me my first sighting of juvenile Sandgrouse in almost 4 years of watching them!

Male with 3 chicks in foreground

The 3 young would not leave the male alone, and when we had a look through a spotting scope, we had phenomenal views of the chicks drinking/sucking water off the belly feathers of the male!!

Poor angle of two chicks drinking

WOW!!  I've read about it, and know about the belly-wetting, but to see the chicks in action was incredible!!

Nature has an amazing way of firing up your day...

No water!!! What now?

During a recent visit to the Sun City site with members of the Bafokeng Land Unit, I was disappointed to see that there was no water flowing through the stream. This has only happened once before, prior to me finding the "source" of the stream.

I quickly headed to the Sun City sewerage works, and had a very brief chat with the manager on site. He confirmed that the water was no longer flowing through the stream, as this was in line with Sun City's policy to recycle 100% of the treated water for use on the golf courses and gardens. Fully understandable.

I mentioned the site and the use thereof by the Yellow-throated Sandgrouse, and he suggested I send him some more information on the bird and the site as a start.

Hopefully we can come to some arrangement that will be feasible.

In the meantime ... EISH!