Route 62 - Barrydale
Barrydale, the perfect weekend getaway on Route 62. A beautiful 2½ hour drive from Cape Town. We offer a marvelous selection of accommodation, restaurants and delightfully different shops.
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Written by Dr. Terry Oatley
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Monday, 01 February 2010 17:42 |
 In Barrydale, February is usually a hot, dry month, hot enough to make one feel grateful that it is the shortest month of the year. It is not the best of months for birding because many of the village birds have little to say and consequently are not always easy to find. This silence is largely due to the post-breeding moult. Many of the Red Bishop Bird males are losing their bright scarlet and black summer breeding attire, replacing it with the streaky brown winter plumage that the female birds wear throughout the year. Although some of the males are still in immaculate breeding plumage, most of them are in progressive body moult, and they make a scruffy-looking bunch at the feeder tray.
One bird that does remain in good voice this month is the handsome Bokmakierie Shrike. Normally in pairs, Bokmakieries are great exponents of the antiphonal duet style of singing, in which one shouts out the first part of a call and the mate responds immediately with the second part. Their calls are loud and may be heard at distances of over a kilometre when there is no wind and the village is quiet. A common duet sounds like Argie-Bargie, Argie-bargie… repeated several times. Another common call sounds just like the standard fixed-line telephone ‘ring’, and I have heard some Barrydale residents refer to the Bokmakierie as the ‘Telephone Bird’. Bokmakieries have very large repertoires, however, and can voice a confusing variety of different calls. They are mainly insectivorous and so are good birds to have in the garden.
It has not been a very good summer for swallows and there are fewer than usual in and around the village. The dry weather has depleted the flying midge populations on which aerial foragers feed, so the best places to look for swallows now are in the vicinity of not-yet-dry farm dams, from which chironomid flies are hatching.
February is the month when the migrant Barn Swallows from Eurasia start congregating along telephone lines in preparation for their long return flights to their breeding haunts. For Barn Swallows in the Western Cape, these could be anywhere between Ireland and the Russian Federation. A healthy Barn Swallow weighs in at around 20 grams, and recoveries of ringed individuals have shown that they can fly the 8000 km from Johannesburg to Britain in as little as 26 days. |
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