October 14, The Karoo

Headed out from our place in Ceres this morning at 5:30 to explore and bird The Karoo.  We found areas that reminded us a lot of eastern Oregon, and we found other areas further in that were  full of many different types of succulents.  But as we've found in our travels so far, there were lots of rocks and rock formations.  The Karoo is a plateau at about 2500 - 3000' where we found huge carpets of pink flowering bushes along with other very showy flowers - we certainly didn't miss ALL of the spring flowers in South Africa!  We did fairly well finding the bird specialties of The Karoo, but it WAS challenging since we didn't know what all of the bird songs and calls were.  And it doesn't help when there are very subtle plumage differences between species.  We had a surprisingly warm and sunny day today, but we are listening to very heavy rain this evening as I am writing this.  We'll head west to Langebaan at West Coast Nature Reserve tomorrow for Steve & Priscilla's last couple days before flying home.

Photos are of Tom, Steve & Priscilla in the courtyard @ the Village Guesthouse in Ceres, the next 5 are scenery and rock formations in The Karoo, the next 3 are of succulents we found in The Karoo,  the thorns on an acacia plant, a Pale Chanting-goshawk, Namaqua Pigeons, female and young African Stonechat, a Weaver's nest, and a Southern Masked Weaver bringing nesting material into the nest.