Winter has been particularly cold and wet in our neck of the woods this year. But for the past few days, it has been sunny and slightly warmer. Spring, we hope, is making her way towards us.

Last Thursday our good friends Tom and Meg from Cape Town came to spend a couple of days with us. “We want to sleep in the caravan,” Tom insisted although we had plenty of beds in the house! And so I made up the caravan as cozily as I could and they were delighted.

On Thursday evening we invited mutual friends around for a braai and we had an awesome time catching up.

On Friday, Tom said he would love us to take him and Meg bird watching. When they stayed with us in 2015 we had a very successful trip to Arniston and surrounds and got a list of 72 birds. The route Tom requested this time was to De Mond and back which covered some of the roads we did in October 2015. This time of the year, I warned, would probably not produce as many birds.

On checking on the 2015 excursion I saw that we made a very early start. Eight years later we only made it to breakfast at Earth Restaurant after 10! But even with the time and the light not being quite right we still managed to chalk up 55 species.

I really wanted to see a secretary bird and a Denham’s Bustard. The latter was a real possibility as these birds are quite common in the area but they must have been away for the weekend. However, just as we were resigning ourselves to the fact that no more species would be added to the list, a big bird dropped from the sky, landed in the field next to the car and took off at a run! It was a secretary bird. We almost fell out of the vehicle in surprise and I only just managed to get two very poor photographs!

In the evening we had a wonderful time at Suitpunt Diepsee Hengelklub’s social where we enjoyed pork curry for dinner and enjoyed the company of our friends Sonja and Roger again.

On Saturday Tom and Meg packed up and went to spend a night with a friend in Agulhas before returning to Cape Town on Sunday.

Sunday was a truly awesome sunny day and I could not bear to waste it so persuaded the Earl to take a drive along the Elim Road and then to Napier where we had lunch. We left at 9 am and had a wonderful morning of birding chalking up 45 species. Some we’d seen on our birding excursion with Tom and Meg and but others were new giving us a total for the weekend of 64