Five birds of South Africa

I am not particularly a birder but I do enjoy watching birds. They are the last creatures able to live free around us without necessarily needing us to eat. Unlike rats, for example, who live free but live on our garbage.

Here are five totally different and random birds from South Africa, just because I happen to have their pictures.

First, a parrot from the garden. Lovely creature!

Then sociable weaver birds. The masses on top of the electric poles are the nests. Some of the nests get even bigger than this.

The nest is accessed from the under side. Socialble weaver birds are amazingly plain looking. In fact if they were away from their nest they would be hard to tel apart from common sparrows.

Just for comparaison here is a photo I have shown before of a "normal" weaver bird making his own nest all on its own. In fact in this case you have one bird (the male) and two nests as opposed to one nests and many birds

The next bird is the Mystery Bird. I have no idea what it is but I spent some time watching it. I was in Augrabies Falls National Park. A small stream was running across the road (in a reverse bridge pattern where the stream is made to cross over a cement section of road and you have to drive through the water to get cross). He was on the up stream side of the cement road and when a small fish came over the cement he would grab them and eat them.

And this one is a tiny little bird called Malachite King Fisher. The photo is not great but it is a neat little bird.