B is for Birding Buddies, Birds Captured 2015, Big Bad Words, Batteries, Bathrooms, Blurds and Bugger Ups.
So who are the “we” I keep referring to ? My BIRDING BUDDIES of course, namely Rookie and Rob. We do a fair amount of birding together here in Cape Town and last year I had the good fortune of being invited along on their Kruger Trip. Clearly I was a good girl and behaved myself extremely well so much so that I was invited along this year as well. Meet my Birding Buddies.
By now you may also be wondering what Birds Captured 2015 is all about…. well it is a Facebook Group that I started in 2013. The idea being to see how many different bird species one can capture with your camera during the year. The birds have to be free flying but can be captured from all the world. It really is not a competition against each other but more of a competition against yourself. We have members from various other countries so it is also lends itself to a bit of arm-chair birding. Members start a photo album on the group and upload one photo per bird species to that album. We also run photo challenges every ten days - at the end of the ten days members vote and the winner of the challenge choses the next challenge. So in other words we were chasing BIRDS on this trip…..big time. I needed 100 BIRDS to beat my last year’s number of 442. It is one thing seeing and hearing the bird…it is another thing trying to capture it on camera….hence the BIG BAD words that would escape every now and then.
BUGGER UPS ???? Oh there were plenty of those….apart from the BLURDS
that contribute to the BIG BAD Words….there were a few others like arriving at Phalaborwa Gate, hearing a Diderik’s Cuckoo , grabbing camera, taking aim and nothing happened. One very flat BATTERY in one’s camera. Oh yes I did have a spare because in actual fact I am quite an organised person but said spare was in the deepest darkest depths of my togbag which was in the deepest darkest depths of the boot. So an unpack of boot and unpack of tog bag ensued until finally I had a charged battery in my grubby little paws….of course the Diderik Cuckoo had long since flown. By now a visit to the BATHROOM was needed as the BATHROOMS in Eden Square, Phalaborwa had not been of the best - but when I got back to the car I realised that I had left my cell phone in the bathroom - more BIG BAD words. In the meantime my BIRDING BUDDIES were having a wonderful time capturing birds left ,right and centre. Finally I got myself sorted and the BIRDING BEGAN
Grey-headed Bush-Shrike ( very happy with this one
)
Kurrichane Thrush
Red-headed Weaver
By the time we left the Gate and entered the park I had 3 Birds captured - only 97 to go ….:)
I see we are going to have fun along the way...some very clever peeps reading this....