We left Sunrock after breakfast at about 7:30 to head to Kruger National Park which is quite a long drive, especially with all the birding stops we make along the way.

Flowers along the road

But, before we could do any serious birding we had to make it through the traffic of greater Joburg. By the time we got on a road we could bird from it was time for lunch so we stopped at Dulllstroon at Harry’s Pancakes. Dullstroom is a big fly fishing area so there were a lot of smoked trout options on the menu.

Crested Eagle along the road(sorry the light was bad)

Before I go on let me tell you about our group. Our guide is Greg. He has worked at Kruger National Park for 14 years as a guide and then training new guides. He is very knowlegable about not only the birds but animals and reptiles and all the creatures we encounter. He also is very nice and pays attention to how we are all doing. Melani and Simon are from Manchester, England. They are probably in their early 50’s and Simon is an ornithologist who is quite helpful in finding birds. They both brought their scopes so we have 3 for 6 people which is very useful. Warren is a retired private school English teacher from Indiana who actually taught at Northfield Mt. Hermon from ’61 to ’71. He has traveled extensively internationally and has quite a list of birds that he has seen—6600. Pao is from Taiwan and has also traveled a lot and does photography. His English isn’t great and we’re all trying very hard to get him to see things and know what’s going on. He is small and wears complete camoflague outfits including a floppy hat and carries a tripod and very large camera, which also has a camo protective cover. He’s quite a sight and as we walked around the botanical gardens kids were pointing at him and exclaiming to others about that guy in the camo. But he is a sweet soul and really fun to have around.

After sating ourselves we started to do some birding. Our first stop was Abel Erasmus Pass which was quite beautiful. The first thing we saw of note was a Mocking Cliff Chat. As we were watching it and trying to get a good picture Greg and Simon went across the street and down a path to a river to see what they could find.

Greg trying to call in the Mountain Wagtail

Other side of the stream

Then we saw another little bird we couldn’t identify that Pao took a great picture of. Then Greg came running up the hill to get us to see another bird. So we followed him back down to try to see a Mountain Wagtail that is a rare sighting but when we got there Simon said he had flown. Then we asked Greg about the the bird we had seen and showed him Pao’s picture and you should have seen his face. He said it was a Striped Pipit and he had never seen one and had been trying to find it for years. So we climbed back up that steep trail to find it again but didn’t succeed. We did find a few other birds but I think Greg was a bit crestfallen.

Baboon at the pass

From there we moved on to Orpen Gate of Kruger National Park where we are to stay for the next 3 nights. Greg was really stressed because they close the gate at 5:00 and we just made it to the security gate by 4:30 and we still had a ways to go to the actual gate of the park then we had to make it to our camp before they closed that gate at 6:00. We made it by about 5:58. We do tend to want to stop a lot and of course being our first experience in the park we had to stop for every animal we saw —Hyena, Impala,Waterbuck, Greater Kudu, Giraffe, Hippo,Warthog and Vervet Monkey — and that was just an hour! We were all ready to crash that night. It was a very long day.

Our first Elephant

First Giraffe

Impala buck

Greater Kudu with Red-billed Oxpeckers