All quiet on the western front - PM 2023

[pedro maia]

As in the tittle, things have been pretty quiet here, truth is that this year  I haved´t gone birding at all, except for one day in Castro Verde/Mértola a couple of months ago, a very nice day with some great sightings, such as 3 different Spannish imperial eagles (I have the non-scientific feeling that their numbers are increasing steadily), it´s my favourite are for birding in Portugal but not the place to look for new species, and I´ve been to lazy to do that, there are many not so difficult species I still miss here but I would have to try and find them one by one and so far I haven´t felt motivated to do that.

 

I started the year with 300 species in Portugal and 637 worlwide (according to ebird), nothing too exciting but I´m still a recent birder and I can only improve those numbers, and those are the counts I´ll follow this year, again I won´t be doing a proper BY, just try to buid on those counts without any specific goals.

 

Anyway, I don´t have any new birds from Portugal but I did a short trip to Namibia during Easter, a country I wanted to visit for quite some time, in 2018 I had everything booked to go there but I had to cancel that trip a couple of weeks prior to our scheduled departure but not this time, there were no last minute issues so off we went for a one week road trip, it may sound a bit insane to do that in a huge country like Namibia but we couldn´t make a longer vacation, that´s how it is and we have no complaints, we just go and enjoy and that´s what we did, we just loved Namibia, I like to drive so driving time was part of the fun, driving was most times smooth, roads are great and most of them absolutely scenic, landscapes are incredible, out of the places we visited we can only compare it with Arizona in terms of landscapes, but wilder in this case.

 

We flew with Ethiopian (lisbon- Rome and London-Lisbon with TAP, 20+ hours each way, also not a problem, flights were ok and all in time, we will have no issues with flying again with Ethiopian, and our itinerary in Namibia was this one:

 

 

Our flight arrived in Windhoek at 13:20, on schedule, we met my brother-in-law who joined us caming from Macao, picked up the renatal car at Avis, also the second spare tire (we wouldn´t even need the first one) and drove to Okahandja, one hour north, where we would stay for the first night at the Okahandja Country Hotel, a perfect choice for that first night, and arrived on time for some birding at the hotel grounds.

 

I´m going to make a count for the trip and also follow my world total, with the new species in bold. 

 

And, of course, I wll be more than happy with all the corrections on my ID´s 

Edited April 13, 2023 by pedro maia

[pedro maia]

N1, Burchell's starling (Lamprotornis australis)

[pedro maia]

N2, Ring-necked Dove (Streptopelia capicola)

[pedro maia]

N3 (W638), Golden-tailed Woodpecker Campethera abingoni

[pedro maia]

N4 (W639), Pririt Batis (Batis pririt)

[pedro maia]

N5 (W640), Rosy-faced Lovebird (Agapornis roseicollis)

[pedro maia]

N6 (W641), Red-billed Spurfowl (Pternistis adspersus)

Edited April 13, 2023 by pedro maia

[pedro maia]

N7 (W642), African Gray Hornbill (Lophoceros nasutus)

 

First of many EBC´s...

[pedro maia]

N8, Yellow canary (Crithagra flaviventris)

Edited April 18, 2023 by pedro maia

[michael-ibk]

Good to see you in action again Pedro. 😎

[pedro maia]

29 minutes ago, michael-ibk said:

Good to see you in action again Pedro. 😎

 

How about you Michael, are you taking a sabbatical year?

[michael-ibk]

I'm out of action for the time being.

 

[Galana]

Good to see you taking a trip. Looking forward to the rest of the story.

To cover that amount of territory in just a week it is a wonder you saw any birds at all.

[TonyQ]

@pedro maiaa great start. Good to see you taking part again 

[pedro maia]

2 hours ago, Galana said:

Good to see you taking a trip. Looking forward to the rest of the story.

To cover that amount of territory in just a week it is a wonder you saw any birds at all.

 

I’m sure I missed a few birds in some streches of the trip .
 

[BRACQUENE]

Good to have you on board Pedro , I am looking forward to this trip and the birds !

[Galana]

1 hour ago, pedro maia said:

I’m sure I missed a few birds in some stretches of the trip 

It was not the missing them that worried me. At that speed it would be the ones you hit.

[PeterHG]

Great to see you back here, Pedro! To most of us this would seem too challenging an effort for a week, but I'm sure for you it was almost an extended vacation ;). Some wonderful species in your first batch.

[Peter Connan]

Welcome back Pedro!

A nice selection of birds already.

[pedro maia]

1 hour ago, Galana said:

It was not the missing them that worried me. At that speed it would be the ones you hit.

 

I´m a very cautious driver, I didn´t hit any birds or other animals, at least that I have noticed .

[pedro maia]

58 minutes ago, PeterHG said:

Great to see you back here, Pedro! To most of us this would seem too challenging an effort for a week, but I'm sure for you it was almost an extended vacation ;). Some wonderful species in your first batch.

 

I have a trip to Japan booked for next August and we´ll stay there for 9 nights, that´s definitely an extended vacation for us .

[pedro maia]

Thans for the welcome, @TonyQ, @BRACQUENEand @Peter Connan.

[pedro maia]

The rest of the species from Okahandja:

 

N9, Red-billed buffalo-weaver (Bubalornis niger)

[pedro maia]

N10, Crimson-breasted gonolek (Laniarius atrococcineus)

[pedro maia]

N11 (W643), Southern pied babbler (Turdoides bicolor)