Tropical Audubon Society

South Florida’s Voice of Conservation

I've just returned from 16 incredible days of birding in South Africa. I spent three days birding in the Cape Town area before joining a Rockjumper birding tour in eastern South Africa, led by Wayne Jones, that included visits to Kruger National Park, Mkhuze Game Reserve and many other fantastic locations. During my stay, I tallied 366 different birds and 54 mammals, including the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, African buffalo and rhinoceros), all five seen within the span of three hours!

Joining our small group (Alan from Virginia, Martha and Janine from Toronto and Klaas from Sweden) on the Rockjumper tour was Noah Stryker, now past the halfway point of his world birding Big Year attempt to see more than half of the world's birds in a single year. He passed the 3,500 mark early on our tour and is now covering the Cape Town area before continuing to Madagascar, Kenya and beyond. Noah is chronicling his amazing adventure with daily blogs on the website "Birding Without Borders," sponsored by National Audubon. A link to his South Africa blog entries is below.