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| cape birding
route > birding spots > overberg & south coast >
de mond |
De
Mond Nature Reserve:
This reserve is greatly underrated as a birding
site. Quite apart from offering some excellent birding (notably
Damara Tern, Southern Tchagra and a splendid diversity
of waders), the reserve is a beautiful spot, centred on the
broad and placid estuary of the Heuningnes River and flanked
by battlements of white dunes. To reach De Mond, take the R316
southwards from Bredasdorp and, after 10 km, turn right onto
the 16-km long signposted gravel road to the reserve entrance.
Park at the reserve gate, and take a look around the adjacent
milkwood thicket for Southern Tchagra as well as more
widespread coastal-thicket birds such as Fiscal Flycatcher
and Acacia Pied Barbet. Take the footpath that
leads from the reserve buildings and across a suspension bridge
over the river, before following the western bank of the estuary
to its outlet into the Indian Ocean (this is the start of the
scenic, 7-km Sterna Trail, which loops from the estuary mouth
westwards along the beach before returning over the dunes to
the reserve office). Pied Kingfisher hunt over the river
while, in summer, Common Sandpiper potter along its banks
and small numbers of migrant waders feed at the estuary edges
and roost on the protruding islands just downstream of the bridge.
In addition to such common species as Curlew Sandpiper,
Ringed Plover and Grey Plover, one can pick out
scarcer and more localized birds such as Bar-tailed Godwit,
Curlew and, occasionally, Terek Sandpiper and
Mongolian and Greater Sand Plovers. African
Black Oystercatcher and Caspian Tern feed at the
estuary mouth (the reserve protects an important breeding colony
of the latter). There is usually a tern roost on the sandbanks:
Swift, Common (summer) and Sandwich Terns
are most common, but small numbers of the diminutive Damara
Tern occasionally roost here or feed over the estuary mouth,
primarily from November to March (see box, overleaf).
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Claire Spottiswoode, Callan Cohen, Peter Ryan and Eve Holloway
of Birding Africa and the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African
Ornithology.
Please do not use any text, images or content from this site without
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© Birding Africa 1997-2003 info@capebirdingroute.org
21 Newlands Road, Claremont, 7708, Cape Town, South Africa
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