Brettenwood Coastal Estate

24^th October 2020

We met at 06h30 at the Woody’s Community Centre. In spite of some getting lost and others arriving with flat phones and no access number into Brettenwood Mike O’ Donoghue was able to leave promptly with the first group of 14. This group reminded me of going on a pelagic as they had fantastic Camera Equipment able to pick up the tiniest speck in the distance. A big thank you to Al Nicoll, E.J. Bartlett and Ronnie Herr for the great bird photo’s, Mark Liptrot for the dragonfly and damselfly photos and Mike O’ Donoghue for leading the group.

Please note you can click on the photos to see larger versions.

The Western route through Brettenwood proved to be the one with the most species. This list of 72 species included Palm-nut Vulture, Black-throated Wattle eye, Red-faced Cisticola and Scaly-throated Honeyguide.

My group (Rex’s) did the Eastern route heading towards the area where I had recently seen Mangrove Kingfisher and Green Malkoha. Both proved elusive and we eventually found 53 species. Our group was however the hands-down winner for socializing and making sure our new members Janka and Andreas Scriba felt welcome.

African Fish Eagle (Ronnie Herr) — Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird (Ronnie Herr)

The combined list ended at 85 species. Breakfast at Woody’s proved to be a winner! We were the first outside group allowed into Brettenwood since the Covid-19 lock-down. I have passed on a big thank you to Brettenwood for allowing us onto the Estate and the BLPN Chair Nicky Forbes has written a formal letter of thanks as well.