I joined Vernon Head today for a trip to De Mond Nature Reserve near Arniston. The reason for the visit was to try and relocate a Gull-billed Tern that had been reported from there earlier in the week. It was still a full lifer for Vernon and I had yet to get a photograph of one although I had previously already seen 3 different individuals in South Africa over the years and had also seen a number of them in Australia. It is a incredibly rare bird in Southern Africa with only 27 previous records for the subregion which includes 2 previous records for the Western Cape.

Despite intensive searching throughout the day, we were unable to relocate the bird, but there are huge expanses of suitable habitat slightly further upstream which we could not really access due to it being on private land. Near the mouth of the river, we scanned through large tern flocks which contained Caspian, Swift, Sandwich, Common and Little Terns, but just could not turn any of them into the one we were after. Because of us spending most of the time searching for the tern, we never really concentrated too much on what else was around, but a rather habituated Southern Tchagra near the offices would have made a great photographic subject had it not kept in the shadows of the densest bushes and Wattled Starling and Giant Kingfisher were new for my photographic yearlist (although neither really presented themselves for decent photos...). The only reptile of the day was a single Angulate Tortoise whilst the only mammal was a Yellow Mongoose.