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With news of both Yellow-crowned Bishop and Temminck's Courser being present in the Beaufort West area for the last few days and since we still needed both of these species for our Western Cape lists, we decided late on Friday night to have a go for them. Leaving at 4am on Saturday morning, we hit the N1 heading north and drove the 465km through to Beaufort West. Our friends, John Graham and Graham Searll, had also decided to try for these birds and arrived in town just 10 minutes after us. Going straight to the site for the Yellow-crowned Bishop, we were pleasantly surprised to find a small group of them comprising at least 3 males and several females. There were a number of other species present in the area with things like Black-throated Canary and Red-headed Finch, also both very good birds for the province, showing well. We didn't want to waste too much time there, so headed out on the road to Rietbron to go and start looking for the Temminck's Coursers. We spent a lot of time scanning the open Karoo plains before John eventually picked up what he thought was one in the distance. We walked over in that direction and were extremely excited when we came across 3 of these birds, an extremely tough bird to connect with in the province. Unfortunately, these birds were extremely skittish and would not let us get anywhere near them. Lots of jubilation and congratulations followed as it started to sink in that we had been so successful with our quest.

As we were still standing there, Trevor's telephone rang with news of a Southern Carmine Bee-eater at Nature's Valley, only the second record ever for the province! A quick look at the GPS showed that it was about 187km away over some windy mountain passes, so we made the decision immediately to go for it. Back in the cars, it seemed like an eternity before we eventually arrived in the small village of Nature's Valley. A quick phone call to one of the locals had us going straight to where the bird had been hanging out and we were still busy getting out of the cars when we located it! Another hugely successful provincial twitch! We spent the next couple of hours with the bird enjoying it before leaving and making our way to Wildernis where we booked into Ebb 'n Flow, the Garden Route National Park's restcamp.

Up at a relatively leisurely time on Sunday morning, we spent a bit of time birding in the Wildernis area enjoying many of the regular species one would expect there as well as finding at least 2 calling Marsh Warblers, another rare species for the province. Unfortunately, despite intensive trying, we could not get them to show themselves decently for a photo, so walked away without any photographic evidence of the record. After grabbing a brunch at a local restaurant, we eventually started the long drive back home.