ADU travels, expeditions and events

On 20 September 2007, Doug Harebottle and I travelled to Goudini Spa to assess what birding would be like in and around the Goudini Spa Conference Centre, at the time of PAOC12 next year. Given that SABAP2 started a couple of months ago, it was logical to kill two birds with one stone, and combine the exploration with some genuine atlas fieldwork.

Photo Les Underhill

As you exit du Toit's Kloof Pass heading from Paarl towards Worcester, the Goudini Spa sign high up on the mountainside to the left is a familiar landmark for motorists. Nestling in the valley just below is the conference centre for PAOC12. You can find the sign on GoogleEarth; the coordinates are 33° 59' 51.78"S, 19° 15' 34.14"E

The Twelfth Pan-African Ornithological Congress (PAOC12) will take place at the ATKV Goudini Spa Conference Centre from 7-12 September 2008. Goudini Spa is in the Breede River Valley, near Worcester in the Western Cape. It is near the eastern end of du Toit's Kloof Pass, and just a couple of kilometres to the north of the N1. It is about 80 km from Cape Town. Besides having excellent conference facilities, Goudini Spa is a holiday resort in its own right, utilizing the hot water springs that bubble up from underground in seemingly unlimited quantities. The resort lies on the interface between fynbos and vineyards, the ideal location for a meeting which has its theme  Birds and People: Interaction, Utilisation and Conservation.

Visit the PAOC12 website www.paoc12.org for more information updates. If there is any chance that you might like to attend, please fill in the preregistration form, available from the homepage, and we will alert you to the key deadlines that lead up to the meeting.

Photo Les Underhill	Photo Les Underhill
The plenary hall is at the top of the stairs ...	... and immediately below the plenary hall is this heated indoor swimming pool ...
Photo Doug Harebottle	Photo Doug Harebottle
... and there is lots of hot water outside, too ...	... and this is one of the "Slanghoek" chalets ...

Les Underhill

ADU, UCT

Photo Doug Harebottle

The vineyards were just starting to bud

Doug Harebottle and I made a reasonably early start, leaving Cape Town at 0615, and started atlasing in pentad 3340_1915 by 0715. The pentad consisted mostly of agricultural landscape in the form of vineyards which were just starting to bud, the small rural town of Rawsonville with some very attractive gardens, and an area of mountain fynbos. This pentad is almost entirely lacking in wetlands; there are two rivers that flow out of mountain valleys, but they are boulder rich and bird poor - there was a Pied Kingfisher, though. In the first hour we got our list to 40 species, in the second hour we added 11 species, and in the third hour we added another four, to get the total to 55 species. What was striking was the lack of raptors. Rock Kestrel was our 51st species, a soaring Booted Eagle our 53rd and a Verreauxs' Eagle our 54th.

Photo Doug Harebottl

Mountain fynbos

The Goudini pentad (3335_1915) was the more bird-rich. Although we only started atlasing late in the morning, we recorded 59 species in the four hours we spent the pentad. It has a larger habitat diversity than the Rawsonville pentad. The agricultural landscapes themselves are more diverse - not only vineyards, but also some pastures with cattle and some croplands. The gardens of the resort contain many shrubs and trees - aloes and coral trees were in full flower - and attract a variety of species, especially sunbirds, and this was where we saw African Paradise Flycatchers, Swee Waxbills, Klaas's Cuckoo and Cape Batis. There is a large area of mountain fynbos behind the Goudini Spa resort, and some remnants of lowland fynbos in the Breede River valley. There are quite a large number of small farms dams, but they mostly have steep sides and we did not see waterbirds at any of the dams. After the good winter rains, there were still some small pools of water in the farmland, and most of the waterbirds we saw were on these. The Breede River itself flows through this pentad and we added a few species at the bridge over the river. Probably the best species we recorded for the pentad were Hamerkop and Blue Crane; a species that was only recorded once among 173 SABAP1 checklists submitted for the quarter degree grid cell (3319CB Worcester) in which this pentad falls. Once again raptors were in short supply - we saw only Jackal Buzzard. We did not see a single Black-shouldered Kite the entire day.

Photo Doug Harebottle

The Breede River flows through the Goudini pentad

During the day we saw a total of 75 species. Here are the birdlists for the two pentads. The numbers in the columns represent the order in which we saw the species. Note that pentads are named by the coordinates of its northwestern corner. Thus 3335_1915 is the pentad with 33°35'S 19°15'E in the "top left hand" corner, and stretches five minutes to the south and to the east, so that the other four corners are to 33°40'S 19°15'E 33°35'S 19°20'E and 33°40'S 19°20'E. Five minutes is roughly 8 km.