Wakkerstroom South Africa

Wakkerstroom has not only become known but it has become an almost obligatory stop-over for the global birder, the person who spends every holiday finding new birds in new countries.

Vacationtechnician personalized luxury adventure travel transports you to the most exquisite wilderness and chill out retreats on Earth. Conserving rare biodiversity through low volume tourism; our aim is your indulgence -at no one's expense. Plan now to be assured a rejuvenating escape at a restful pace -to an unspoilt gem in the purest sense.

There was a time when Wakkerstroom ranked as one of the least known places in South Africa, tucked away in the hills on a road to nowhere, and a claim to nothing. Things have certainly changed.

In the space of a few years, Wakkerstroom has not only become known but it has become an almost obligatory stop-over for the global birder, the person who spends every holiday finding new birds in new countries.

Birds apart, there are several good reasons to visit Wakkerstroom. Firstly, it is not too far from main centres like Johannesburg, Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Pietermaritzburg and Nelspruit. You can step off a jumbo from Connecticut or Frankfurt and be there in less than three hours in your hire car, without much risk of getting lost, mugged or hijacked. Secondly, Wakkerstroom's surroundings offer quality scenery and grassland landscapes that are as near pristine as one will find in South Africa. There are also nice places where one can spend the night, with a range of accommodation to suit any pocket, from backpacker to ritzy traveller.

But the real reason for a visit, of course, is that the Wakkerstroom district provides a quality birding experience, and the village is quite nice. Wakkerstroom is situated in a protected valley surrounded by high-lying, rolling grassland country. Fifteen kilometres east of the town lies the Drakensberg escarpment, where the steep, rocky topography offers a different landscape and small outliers of Afro-montane forest; in other directions, the pristine grassland gradually merges into croplands as one descends to warmer altitudes which favour the growing of maize.

Several major rivers have their sources around Wakkerstroom and a number of important wetlands are associated with these. The most accessible is the large (700 hectares) reed swamp that half circles the town. Managed as a bird reserve for the past five years, the Wakkerstroom Wetland Reserve is home to a fair proportion of South Africa's waterbird species, with six resident duck species, a suite of herons and rallids, numerous waders in summer and a large resident population of Ethiopian Snipe. This marsh also has its specials. It is, for example, home to several pairs of African Marsh Harriers, a species that is becoming scarcer by the day, 12-13 breeding pairs of Crowned Cranes, Grass Owl, and it offers a place where the patient birder stands a good chance of seeing Baillon's Crake and Little Bittern. The 'gold star' of the marsh, though, is the White-winged Flufftail. Elusive, enigmatic, this species is here in some years and not others, and the prospect of seeing it is remote. If present, its distinctive hooting call should be listened for during summer, just before daybreak.

Within easy range of the town are several seasonal pans that support a quite different waterbird community. These pans only fill with water after periods of good rain, and they often dry up, so one takes one's chances with them. There is an explosion of life on these when they fill with the first good summer rains, and numbers of such species as Whiskered Tern, Great Crested and Black-necked grebes, and White-backed and Maccoa ducks move on to them to breed. As they dry out in winter, so the host of man-made dams in the district offer a winter refuge to waterfowl from the seasonal pans. The largest such refuge is Heyshope Dam (12 000 hectares in extent and the sixth largest dam in South Africa) and it is easily accessible, lying 50 kilometres east of Wakkerstroom. At times it can provide a remarkable spectacle of wintering waterfowl: as many as 55 000 have been counted there.

The grasslands are Wakkerstroom's real birding attraction as these are home to many of South Africa's endemics. Wakkerstroom is probably the best single locality in the country to find Bald Ibis, Blue Korhaan, Ground Woodpecker, Buff-streaked Chat, Rudd's and Botha's larks, and Yellow-breasted Pipit. All of these occur within a few kilometres' radius of the town and all can be found while birding from the car on the network of roads that radiates out from Wakkerstroom. There are at least seven Bald Ibis breeding colonies in the district (all on rock faces), and in winter up to 100 birds come to roost at night in the willow trees surrounding the town dam. Blue Korhaans live in pairs or small groups which can be found in the same places throughout the year. Their preference is for flat or, at most, gently undulating, open grassland. Rudd's and Botha's larks have similar needs and the two species sometimes occur together, and alongside the korhaans. Rudd's Lark is, however, restricted (around Wakkerstroom) to altitudes above 1 900 metres, and Botha's Lark to heavily grazed upland sites on the so-called 'turf' soils (black clays). Ground Woodpeckers and Buff-streaked Chats often occur side by side, as both frequent rock-strewn hillsides. The rocky ridge in the wetland reserve in town has a resident pair of Buff-streaked Chats, and Ground Woodpeckers nest in the banks of the large quarry just above the town. The last of the 'specials', Yellow-breasted Pipit, occurs here and there in pockets on high-lying ground (above 1 900 metres), especially where the grass cover has been spared from burning the previous winter. This is a summer bird only at Wakkerstroom, moving elsewhere in winter.

With the exception of the pipit, most of the grassland specials mentioned above are year-round residents. About two-thirds of the grassland species remain in the area all year and some species, such as Long-tailed Widow, Orange-throated Longclaw and Ant-eating Chat, are abundant and conspicuous at all times. The other third of the species are seasonal visitors, and the massive influx of birds on to the grasslands in summer is very noticeable. The Grassland Pipit is one such visitor, being abundant in summer and virtually absent in winter. Flocks of Eastern Red-footed Kestrel line the telephone wires at this time of the year and swallows and swifts are prolific, especially Greater Striped Swallow, Banded Martin and White-rumped Swift. Black Harriers visit the district in summer, when Stanley's Bustard, Blue Crane and Black-winged Plover also arrive from lower-lying country to breed.

East of Wakkerstroom, where the escarpment receives more rain than the town, isolated patches of evergreen forest occur. The largest of these covers 532 hectares and forms the Pongolo Bush Nature Reserve. Crowned Eagles, Orange Thrush, Blue-mantled Flycatcher and many other forest species are resident here. Bush Blackcap is found at Pongolo Bush, but also ranges into many of the smaller pockets of forest found closer to town, alongside Barratt's Warblers, Cape Batises and Bar-throated Apalis.

In summary, Wakkerstroom offers the birder the best of South Africa's grassland endemics and other grassland-loving species, a good cross-section of waterbirds and a reasonable complement of forest birds. You won't come away having seen a stunning diversity of species (as you would, say, at Mkuzi or in the Kruger Park), but you'll probably count more endemics on your list from here than you'd pick up at at any other single locality in South Africa.

Birding
Makalolo, Zimbabwe -Red-backed Shrike
Wakkerstroom, South Africa- Gold Star Birding
Pelagic Sea Birding off the Cape Peninsula
Hot Birding -Southwest Cape South Africa
The Kruger National Park Birding Guide
Red-hot birding...Discovering the Kalahari
Garden Route Nature's Valley to Knysna, South Africa
The Fish Eagle
Northern Tanzania-Birding
Birdwatching in Uganda
Greater Spotted Eagle Wintering in Zambia
Peregrine Falcons
Birding in Ndumo Game Reserve South Africa