Bird rarities in the Kruger National Park
Our little mining town of Phalaborwa made avian headlines last week when a Wood Warbler showed up in the gardens of a lodge in town. Predominantly a northern hemisphere species, it is widespread over Europe, western Asia and the western extreme of the Middle East. It overwinters in Africa reaching as far south as the central parts of Tanzania although it more commonly settles further north and west of that. The Wood Warbler doesn’t look at all dissimilar to the Willow Warbler, a non-breeding migrant that migrates from northern and temperate Europe and the Palearctic to spend the summer months in sub-Saharan Africa (including the Kruger Park), and you’d be forgiven for overlooking the would-be imposter believing it was our visiting Willow. It was by a fortuitous stroke of luck that the Wood Warbler was discovered and identified by a visiting birder from the UK, else it may still be flitting about unnoticed. According to Trevor Hardaker, chairman of the South Africa Rarities Committee, “this is clearly a case of reverse migration that has happened here, with the bird coming south instead of migrating north like it should have”.
The Kruger has been a temporary home to a number of rare birds over the years. If memory serves, in 2018 an Egyptian Vulture spent a number of days in the Kruger, hanging around the Olifants River high level bridge before steadily moving south and exiting the Park a few days later. The species in regionally extinct and this individual (and others – there have been approximately 50 sightings of the Egyptian Vulture in South Africa since 1945) would have been a vagrant, meaning they visit for a short period before returning to their feeding grounds.
For the past few years, a Madagascar Cuckoo believed to be the same individual has made the Biyamiti Loop which runs along the very picturesque Biyamiti River in the southern Kruger its summer home. This species breeds exclusively in Madagascar but migrates mainly to the African Great Lakes region and some Indian Ocean islands. This bird has clearly chosen this bucolic area of the Kruger Park for its holiday home so perhaps its not so cuckoo after all.
But not all rare birds remain rare. The Yellow-billed Oxpecker is a lovely success story of a bird that once occurred in the Kruger Park but disappeared only to make a remarkable return. The rinderpest outbreak of 1896 in the Lowveld decimated wild populations of buffalo, giraffe and wildebeest, all major hosts of ticks that form the bulk of the Yellow-billed Oxpecker’s diet. The implementation of cattle dips and immoderate use of pesticides thereafter further decreased their food source and their numbers swiftly dwindled. Resultantly, the Yellow-billed Oxpecker subsequently became extinct as a breeding species in South Africa. However, they re-emerged in the Kruger in 1979 and were next recorded breeding again in 1985. Once only seen in the northern region of the Kruger, they are now fairly widespread and while still listed as Vulnerable, are now considered a common resident in the Kruger. When in South Africa, Yellow-Billed Oxpeckers are found only in the Kruger National Park and adjoining private nature reserves as well as on the occasional cow in Phalaborwa. It’s true. I’ve seen it!
With almost 500 bird species occurring in the Kruger, this National Park has for long been a birding Mecca and one that many ‘Kruger Parkers’ return to year after year. And every now and then, birders are treated to something out of the ordinary. Just last month, a family who have been visiting the Kruger for many years and have become regular guests at Bushveld Terrace were treated to a sighting of a juvenile Greater Flamingo at the Tihongonyeni waterhole along the S143. They had toiled hard compiling their trip list and were duly rewarded with a special sighting. Their hard work had clearly paid off. If you can call it hard. Or work…
