Week 19 - Bloemfontein Squash Trip

I bet you were all thinking "Now why don't he write?". Well with a blog named "The Lazy Birder" you can be sure he's a Lazy Blogger as well. This past few months have been really busy ones, not birding busy unfortunately but family, sport and work busy with a few birding opportunities in between.

The squash league season has started up again and occupies our time for most week nights. My son was once again privileged to be chosen to represent his province for squash and this took us off to Bloemfontein for a weekend of squash spectating with a few quick bird photo opportunities in between games. At the University of the Free State campus I found a large flock of Wattled Starlings flying around and making their usual racket. They were foraging on White Stinkwood berries and with some patience I was able to approach a few younger birds who were more trusting or should I say naive.



Wattled Starlings (4)





I also managed to see some birds that are less common in our area but are very common in Bloemfontein. Two of these were the Orange-River White-eye and the Red-eyed Bulbul.



Orange-River White-Eye





Red-eyed Bulbuls (2)



We also managed to take a drive through the Naval Hill nature area but birds were few and far between and the ones we did see were extremely camera shy. I only managed a fairly decent photo of a very busy Neddicky which preferred to stay behind the leaves.



Neddicky



As I said it was more a squash weekend than a birding weekend so not really anything worthwhile mentioning. Hope you enjoyed the photos anyway! I hope to catch up with some more posts in the next few days now that the pressure is off a bit! I hope you will take the time to come back and have another look!