Category Archives: Travel

Go Awaaaay! Go Awaaaaay!

Gray go-away bird (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

23 January 2024: Day 5, Zambezi National Park — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Today we’re on a birding drive through Zambezi National Park where we’re sure to hear the unique call of a very plain bird.

The gray go-away bird (Crinifer concolor) is named for the whiny sound he makes that, in English, sounds like “go awaaaaay.” All gray in color, he has a crest like a northern cardinal but he’s more than twice its length and 10 times its weight. Unlike the cardinal’s beautiful song the go-away bird sounds like he’s whining.

In fact he’s making an alarm call and all the birds and animals know it, fleeing or freezing in place while he warns them.

He whines alone …

… or with a crowd.

Gray go-away birds in a thorn tree (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Go-away birds don’t fly well but they can clamber.

Though their flight is rather slow and laboured, they can cover long distances. Once in the open tree tops however, they can display the agility which is associated with the Musophagidae [Turacos], as they run along tree limbs and jump from branch to branch. They can form groups and parties numbering even 20 to 30 that move about in search of fruit and insects near the tree tops.

Wikipedia: grey go-away bird

At some point I’m sure they’ll tell us to “Go Awaaaay!”

At Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls from the air, border of Zambia & Zimbabwe (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

22 January 2024: Day 4, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Today we fly north from Johannesburg to the town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, a distance of 574 miles (925 km) — about the same as Atlanta to Pittsburgh. I’m looking forward to my first sight of Victoria Falls, a Wonder of the Natural World.

Locally called Mosi-oa-Tunya [MOsee O TOONya] , “The Smoke That Thunders” is well named in the Sotho language. Its thundering noise can be heard 25 miles away while its mist rises to 1,300 feet. When David Livingstone was scouting the Zambezi River in 1855, looking for a trade route to the sea, guides helped him get to an island near the cliff edge where he looked down on the cascade and named it for Queen Victoria — Victoria Falls.

While it is neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world, the Victoria Falls is classified as the largest, based on its combined width of 1,708 metres (5,604 ft [more than a mile]) and height of 108 metres (354 ft), resulting in the world’s largest sheet of falling water. The Victoria Falls are roughly twice the height of North America’s Niagara Falls and well over twice its width.

Wikipedia: Victoria Falls

Before I saw an aerial photo of the falls I thought its entire span could be viewed from a distance as we do at Niagara Falls, but it’s impossible to see the complete sheet of water from the ground because Victoria Falls plunges into a crack!

Panorama of Victoria Falls (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

This is due to its unusual geology, illustrated on this National Park marker in Zimbabwe. Take a look and I’ll summarize it below. (I have divided it into two pieces so it is readable.)

The origin of Victoria Falls began in the Late Jurassic during the time of the dinosaurs.

  • 150 million years ago a volcano erupted and poured a lake of lava at the site of Victoria Falls. The lava hardened into basalt rock. The rock cooled and cracked into fault lines.
  • Sand blew in and deeply filled the faults and covered the basalt. The Zambezi River was far away as it flowed south to join the Limpopo.
  • 5 million years ago the south land in present day Botswana rose up and divided the Zambezi River from the Limpopo, forcing the Zambezi to go east.
  • The Zambezi eroded the sandy surface and flowed widely over the basalt. When it found a fault it fell into the crack as a waterfall.
  • The river is wide on the flat basalt then zigzags after the falls as it follows the fault lines, as seen in this photo from the International Space Station.
Satellite view of Victoria Falls from ISS, NASA (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
  • The present day waterfall is the 8th location since the falls began. Erosion continues up the watershed. A marked up map below shows the first seven falls in yellow, the current waterfall in blue, and two future fall locations in pink.
Satellite view of Victoria Falls from ISS, NASA (photo from Wikimedia Commons, markup by Kate St. John)

The big question as I write this article a month ahead of time is this: How much water will be coming over the falls? October to March is the wet season so the river should be running high. However this is an El Niño year and one of its global effects is to lower rainfall in this part of Africa. So we shall see …

Five years ago the dry season in 2019 was so severe that the falls slowed to a trickle.

video by Guardian News on YouTube

Marievale Birds: The Same and Different

African spoonbill at Marievale Bird Sanctuary, 2015 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

21 January 2024: Day 3, Marievale Bird Sanctuary — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Today we’re birding at Marievale Bird Sanctuary southeast of Johannesburg. In the third week of January it’s mid-summer in South Africa, similar to July in the U.S.

Many of the birds at Marievale are similar to those in Florida. For instance, the African spoonbill pictured above resembles our roseate spoonbill. (I prefer the roseate spoonbill because it is beautiful pink.)

There are also several species that are native in both places: fulvous whistling duck, common moorhen, cattle egret, great egret, glossy ibis, barn swallow and peregrine falcon. At Marievale not every bird is a Life Bird for me.

See Marievale’s birds in the 8-minute video below and you, too, may conclude that South African marsh birds are the same as Florida’s and yet they are different. After the video I’ve provided a table with the names of similar North American species.

video embedded from Safari Moments on YouTube

List of Birds in the Marievale video above and their familiars in North America.

(credits are in the captions)

Every Bird’s a Life Bird

Laughing dove in South Africa (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

20 January 2024: Day 2, Arrive in Johannesburg, South Africa — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Barring something unexpected, I’ll arrive in Johannesburg today at 4:05pm South Africa time (9:05am Pittsburgh time). I’m sure to see a Life Bird right off the bat, even from the airplane window. There are a handful of birds at the airport that I’ve already seen — rock pigeons, cattle egrets, common mynas (seen in Hawaii) and house sparrows — but all the rest are new to me. Crossing an ocean and changing hemispheres guarantees that nearly every bird is a Life Bird.

O.R. Tambo International Airport is an eBird hotspot, perhaps because so many (compulsive?) birders pass through here. Here are five birds that everyone sees at the airport — birds of the Old World, not the New World, so even if they resemble a North American bird they’re not in the same genus.

Laughing doves (Spilopelia senegalensis) resemble mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) but their throats are fancier when they puff them in courtship. Instead of mourning they laugh.

Laughing dove pair (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Little swifts (Apus affinis) are similar to our chimney swifts (Chaetura pelagica) though slightly smaller with white throats and rumps. The white features are not easy to see against the sky.

Little swifts (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

You can tell that the pied crow (Corvus albus) is a crow but he looks mighty different. He wears a white vest and is heavier then our American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos).

Pied crow in flight (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

We don’t have the southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus) in North America. His beauty and size put the house sparrow to shame.

Southern masked weaver in front of a house sparrow, South Africa (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

House sparrows were imported to South Africa just as they were to North America. Why did someone bother to bring in house sparrows when South Africa has a more beautiful native — the Cape sparrow (Passer melanurus) also called “mossie.”

Male Cape sparrow (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

By the time I’m on the road to the hotel I’ll have seen at least five Life Birds.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

Gone Birding in Southern Africa

Gray-crowned crane closeup (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

19 January 2024: Day 1, Fly to Johannesburg, South Africa — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari

Today I’m on my way to Road Scholar’s Southern Africa Birding Safari: From Zimbabwe to Zambia & Beyond. The tour begins tomorrow in Johannesburg, South Africa but it will take me 24 hours to get there.

Africa is huge — more than three times the size of the continental U.S. — so we will see only a small part of it. For most of the trip we’ll be inside the red circle (below) in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana. All four countries meet at the only international quadripoint in the world, the Four Corners of Africa.

Map of Africa from Wikimedia Commons: X = Johannesburg, O = birding safari location and Four Corners of Africa

After Johannesburg we will fly to Victoria Falls to begin our regional tour of birding hotspots and national parks in safari vehicles, by boat and occasionally on foot. Late January is the rainy season and the height of summer with highs as much as 100°F and lows in the 60s.

Road Scholar map of Southern Africa Birding Safari, 2024

We hope to see the Big 5 mammals at Hwange, Chobe and Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Parks — elephant, lion, leopard, Cape buffalo and rhinoceros — plus assorted other critters on our travels. Here a just a few from my Wish List.

We’ll also see birds! Up to 400 species and nearly all of them Life Birds. Most are unique to Africa. Some have migrated from Europe or Asia to spend the winter. I hope to see the endangered gray-crowned crane (Balearica regulorum), at top, and the birds in this slideshow below plus many more.

Greater flamingos at Marievale

Because of the 7-hour time zone difference and the on-the-go birding schedule I’ve written all 15 days of articles in advance. I’ll post to Facebook and X (Twitter) when I get a chance but I can’t guarantee it. If you don’t see me on social media, look for my latest posts here on the blog’s home page.

For the next two+ weeks I’ll be mostly off the grid.

UPDATE on 2 Feb: The only bird in the slideshow that I did not see was the white stork.

(photo and maps from Wikimedia Commons and Road Scholar. Click on the captions to see the originals.)

How Are Giraffes Doing Nowadays?

Three Masai giraffe at Masai Mara National Park (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

17 January 2024

Giraffes are way cool. They’re the tallest mammal on earth, they hardly sleep at all (only 10-120 minutes per day), they need less water than a camel, and they have big hearts … literally. Their population is also declining. In December 2016 they were placed on IUCN’s Red List of Vulnerable species.

Have their numbers improved in the past seven years? How are giraffes doing nowadays?

Today, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation estimates the current Africa-wide giraffe population at approximately 117,000 individuals.

[Since the 1980s] this is a drop by almost 30%, a slightly less bleak picture than previously portrayed in the 2016 IUCN Red List assessment that estimated giraffe at less than 100,000 individuals. However, this updated information is based more on improved data rather than on actual increases in numbers. Unfortunately, in some areas traditionally regarded as prime giraffe habitat, numbers have dropped by 95% in the same period [since the 1980s].

Giraffe Conservation Foundation

The giraffe population assessment is complicated by their DNA which now reveals they could be split from one species (Giraffa camelopardalis) into four distinct species and seven subspecies, some of which are in good shape while others are not.

A 2007 analysis suggested six species on the map below. To get the latest four species (2021), lump [blue+green] and [pink+red]. Yellow and orange are distinct species.

2007 genetic subdivision in the giraffe based on mitochondrial DNA sequences (from Wikimedia Commons)

The Giraffe Conservation Foundation describes the proposed four species:

  • Southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa) includes Angolan. (Seen on our tour in southern Africa)
    • southeastern Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa and is the animal we imagine when we see the word “giraffe.”
    • Population: 49,850
    • Needs a reassessment, might be Least Concern
  • Masai giraffe (Giraffa tippelskirchi)
    • Kenya, Tanzania and a small region of Zambia. Darker than the other species.
    • Population: 45,400
    • Endangered but improving
  • Reticulated giraffe (Giraffa reticulata)
    • Kenya and southern edge of Somalia. Its patches touch each other in a network pattern.
    • Population: 15,950
    • Endangered but improving
  • Northern giraffe (Giraffa Camelopardalis) includes Rothschild’s and Western.
    • scattered in Western, Central and East Africa
    • Population: 5,900
    • Rothschild’s subspecies (Critically Endangered)
    • Western subspecies (Vulnerable)

So how are giraffes doing nowadays? It’s complicated!

The Bluest Thrush

Grandala near Dzongla (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

11 September 2023

While on the way to somewhere else I found … the bluest thrush.

According to Birds of the World, the grandala (Grandala coelicolor) is a gregarious thrush that makes a vertical migration in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau(*) from barren alpine breeding grounds at 3900–5500 m (12,800-18,000 ft) to rocky mountainside valleys and ridges at 3000–4300 m (9,800-14,000 ft), sometimes as low as 2000 m (6,500 ft).

To put this in perspective, if grandalas lived in the U.S they could only breed on Denali (20,000 ft) or the highest Rocky Mountains. Some of them never come down as low as the highest point in the Rockies, the peak of Mount Elder.

Range map of grandala, embedded from Birds of the World

Grandalas are the same size as wood thrushes and like the wood thrush are the only species in their genus, but there the similarity ends. For instance, grandalas are sexually dimorphic with royal blue males and brownish-gray females.

Five male and one female grandala (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Grandalas have versatile diets tuned to their cold climate lives. They eat insects in summer and fruit in fall and winter.

Like cedar waxwings grandalas travel in huge flocks in fall and winter. When they perch they flick their wings and tails.

Watch the bluest thrush in this 4:45 minute video by RoundGlass Sustain.

video from RoundGlass Sustain on YouTube

(*) Grandalas occur at high altitudes in these countries/territories: India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, China, northern Myanmar.

(credits are in the captions)

At The Cape Last Week

Clouds over Cape Cod Bay near Mayflower Beach, 11 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

15 July 2023

Last week at Cape Cod I came away with many impressions and a few photos of things-that-stand-still. The clouds above Cape Cod Bay and the shallow waves at low tide made a pretty picture on 11 July.

Bird photos are beyond my cellphone’s capability so I’ve borrowed from Wikimedia Commons to illustrate. The Best Birds without a doubt were piping plovers and their chicks at Sea Gull Beach. So cute!

Piping plover chick, Rachel Carson NWR, Maine (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The most common songbird on the Cape is the gray catbird — as common as robins are in Pittsburgh.

Gray catbird in Massachusetts (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Ospreys were always overhead. Most of them had nestlings getting ready to fledge.

Osprey bringing food to its nest, Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Best Insect was an ebony damselfly seen at Stony Brook Mill Site with Bob Kroeger who took this photo.

Ebony damselfly, Stony Brook Mill Site, 8 July 2023 (photo by Bob Kroeger)

Cape Cod has *lots* of rabbits everywhere. I didn’t think to take a photo when a rabbit was nearby. Can you see it in dappled shade in the middle of this photo?

One of the many rabbits on Cape Cod: on the trail at Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary, 11 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

The flowers on this spotted wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) had not yet opened on 6 July.

Spotted wintergreen, South Dennis, MA, 6 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

A Life Flower: American cow-wheat (Melampyrum lineare) in the dry upland pine forest at Wellfleet Bay. Amazingly it is semi-parasitic with leaves for photosynthesis and roots for pulling nutrients from pines, poplars, sugar maples, red oaks and low-bush blueberries.

American cow-wheat, Wellfleet Bay Audubon Sanctuary, 8 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

Greenery we never see in Pittsburgh –> seaweed.

Seaweed at Sea Gull Beach, Yarmouth, MA, 7 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

Our family prefers the beaches on Cape Code Bay where there’s lots of space to spread out at low tide. At high tide all but the far edge is underwater.

Overcast morning at Corporation Beach, Dennis, MA, 9 July 2023 (photo by Richard St. John)

And the waves are shallow like those at Lake Erie.

Sunny afternoon near Mayflower Beach, Dennis, MA, 11 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

At the end of our stay it was 90 degrees for a couple of days. Not so much fun in the sun. Though it’s nice to travel I’m glad to be home.

(photos by Kate St. John, Bob Kroeger and from Wikimedia Commons)

Bird on a Groundhog?

Cattle tyrant bird on a capybara (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

30 June 2023

You’ll never see this bird and mammal wandering in North America.

The bird is the cattle tyrant (Machetornis rixosa) of South America, related to the great kiskadee whose northern range extends into south Texas.

The mammal is the world’s largest rodent, a capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), also in South America.

Capybaras are semi-aquatic (“hydro” in their genus name) and very social, living in groups of up to 100 individuals. See both characteristics in this video.

Capybara’s are so large that a raptor can look small when perched on one of them as shown in this vintage article.

How Plain-Tailed Wrens Sing The Perfect Duet

Plain-tailed wren at banding station, Bellavista, Pichincha, Ecuador, 2011 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

26 April 2023

Eighty days ago at Ecuador’s Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve our tour group heard this species singing from a thicket and added him — or perhaps a pair of them — to our Life Lists.

The plain-tailed wren (Pheugopedius euophrys) is hard to see but its incredibly loud voice is easy to hear, made doubly loud when a pair sings a complicated duet. The duet below was recorded near Tandayapa, Ecuador, perhaps at Bellavista, while other birds were singing in the background. The plain-tailed wrens drown them out.

Intrigued by the birds’ fast-paced, precise duet, researchers in 2021 studied the birds’ brain waves to find the signal that governed the interchange. Instead of an added signal they discovered that, “the species synchronizes their frenetically paced duets by inhibiting the song-making regions of their partner’s brain as they exchange phrases.” The listener’s brain hears something from the partner that mutes his/her own song-making at just the right moment.

“Think of these birds like jazz singers,” said lead author Melissa Coleman. “Duetting wrens have a rough song structure planned before they sing, but as the song evolves, they must rapidly coordinate by receiving constant input from their counterpart.

“What we expected to find was a highly active set of specialized neurons that coordinate this turn-taking, but instead what we found is that hearing each other actually causes inhibition of those neurons—that’s the key regulating the incredible timing between the two.”

It’s not too far-flung to think of these birds as jazz singers. “There are similar brain circuits in humans that are involved in learning and coordinating vocalizations. [Lead authors] Fortune and Coleman say the results offer a fresh look into how the brains of humans and other cooperating animals use sensory cues to act in concert with each other” just like jazz singers.

Here’s one more duet from Tandayapa, Ecuador. Amazing.

Read more at Good News Network: Duetting Songbirds ‘Mute’ the Musical Mind of Their Partner to Stay in Sync, Researchers Find. (quotes above are from this article.)

See the original study at PNAS: Neurophysiological coordination of duet singing.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, audio embedded from Xeno Canto; click on the links to see the originals)