At short notice, Margaret and I joined Sion and Tiana Stanton and their daughter, Jessica, for a weekend away in the Tanqua Karoo. I had been at a business lunch in Stellenbosch on Friday and they collected me from there to avoid me having to fight my way back home through the rush hour traffic. Before even leaving Stellenbosch, we came across a small group of White Storks and I managed to get a couple of really distant shots off as it was the first time I had actually had the opportunity to photograph them in the Western Cape. The remainder of the drive was fairly uneventful (apart from a quick stop to let tyre pressure down where a male Mountain Wheatear caused a minor distraction...) and we eventually arrived at the offices of the Tanqua Karoo National Park at around 8:30pm. Needless to say, we were slightly amused when the official informed us that we still had another 43km to travel to get to the house (called "Varsfontein") that we had hired for the weekend and the dirt roads were not the best we had ever encountered! We had traveled only a few hundred metres when the alarm on the tyre pressure gauge started screaming to let us know that we had a puncture! After virtually unpacking the entire vehicle to get to the spare tyre and changing it in what can only be described as the "darkest of darks", we were on our way again, eventually arriving at Varsfontein some time well after 9pm with having a few distractions along the way including an African Wild Cat, several Cape Hares and a Kudu that were all too quick for the camera and a Porcupine that was camera shy and kept walking away from the camera...

We awoke early on Saturday morning to get acquainted with our surroundings and found that we were in a little oasis. Varsfontein is situated amid vast gravel plains for as far as the eye can see - a habitat that would be considered to be fairly boring by most people. However, the house itself has a windmill which is constantly pumping water into a reservoir which has an overflow on the one end. This in turn spills over to create a small temporary "wetland" which attracts a myriad of birds and even some animals to come and drink there. The homestead also boasts a few large trees which really seem out of place in this arid area, especially the large Palm trees in front of the house! Needless to say, this also serves to attract a number of birds to the immediate area.

One of the best experiences of the entire weekend was sitting next to the small water pond on Saturday morning and waiting as the flocks of Namaqua Sandgrouse gathered overhead giving their typical "kelkiewyn' call as they waited to come down and drink. At one point, there were several hundred of these birds overhead together all calling simultaneously - a truly special sight!

Another really spectacular experience was having a Barn Owl that had taken up residence in one of the outhouses flying around in broad daylight as he came to have a look at the "city folk" and his constant to-ing and fro-ing gave us ample opportunity to get a number of reasonable photos, even although there were many stressful moments when one wasn't able to lock focus or didn't have the shutter speed set correctly, etc.

The remainder of the day was spent initially loafing around the Varsfontein homestead and then driving out to investigate other areas of the park. We also managed to do a night drive on Saturday night which produced only two rodents (admittedly, the wind was howling!), but both of them were full lifers for me - Short-tailed Gerbil and Pygmy Hairy-footed Gerbil.

Early on Sunday morning, we were woken up by the antics of a Spotted Eagle Owl outside the house that actively flew around for a while until it decided to settle and roost up in one of the Palm trees for the day. Once again, we enjoyed the spectacle of the flocks of Namaqua Sandgrouse coming in to drink and eventually pulled ourselves away just after 10am to begin our journey homeward. A stop over in one of the park's picnic/camp sites produced another Barn Owl that again entertained us.

On leaving the national park and making sure that we were officially back in the Western Cape, we quickly located more Namaqua Sandgrouse to photograph just to get it on to the Western Cape photographic list. From there, we made our way towards Skitterykloof where the target was Cinnamon-breasted Warbler. By the time we arrived, the sun was baking down into the valley and most bird activity had ceased. We climbed up one of the mountains to reach better habitat and eventually, I heard a single bird calling. It flitted straight towards us and landed on a rocky outcrop about 30m away. Fortunately, I managed to shoot off a couple of shots before the bird disappeared and the bird can now take its "rightful" place on my Southern African (and Western Cape!) photographic lists, although the shots certainly need a huge amount of improvement!!