Into Africa: February - April 2024 (part 1)

Mar 11

Bonamanzi Reserve, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa

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Cape buffalo, Addo Elephant Park, South Africa

Juvenile Southern Double-collared Sunbird, Cape, South Africa

Back to Africa

A visit to friends and family in Southern Africa was long overdue. Once that was decided, it seemed appropriate to include a safari or two. An avian theme was chosen for our African adventures and East Africa has always been on the bucket list.

Africa is massive. We visited South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania.

Section #1: The Cape, South Africa

We flew from San Francisco, via Atlanta, to Johannesburg. Overnighted at a hotel and continued on to Cape Town. Spent a fabulous week with friends B&A and P&R, linked up with family (B, A&A) and dined with D&D. In all, a wonderful start to our holiday.

Then we relocated to the Eastern Cape and enjoyed a great week with family. B is an environmentalist and he showed us a number of interesting natural areas, each uniquely different.

Our bird species count for the Cape totaled 130.

Pale Chanting Goshawk, Cape, South Africa

Western Cape geology

Gondwana

About 510 million years ago a rift valley developed across Southern Gondwana just south of Southern Africa, but extending westward into South America, eastward into Eastern Antarctica and possibly even into Australia. The rift filled with oceanic water to become the Agulhas Sea and an 5-mile-thick layer of sediment, known as the Cape Supergroup accumulated on its floor.

(Geology information from Wikipedia.)

*Southern Gondwana*
(Future continents depicted brown).

A rift separated Southern Africa from the Falkland Plateau. The sediments which accumulated in the shallow Agulhas Sea consolidated to form the Cape Supergroup of rocks, which constitute the Cape Fold Belt today.

Formation of the Cape Fold Mountains

Starting 330 million years ago, a subduction zone developed along the southern margin of Gondwana, causing the Falkland Plateau to reverse direction, drift back towards Africa and close the rift valley. The continued subduction of the paleo-Pacific Plate beneath the Falkland Plateau and the resulting collision of the latter with Southern Africa, raised a mountain range of immense proportions to the south of the former rift valley. The folded Cape Supergroup sediments formed the northern foothills of this towering mountain range.

A north-south cross-section through the Agulhas Sea.

The brown structures are continental plates, the thick black layer on the left is paleo-Pacific Oceanic plate, red indicates the upper mantle, mauve is Supergroup sediments and blue indicates water.

Top: Falkland Plateau has drifted away from Africa.

Middle: Falkland Plateau drifting northwards to close the Agulhas Sea, causing the Cape Supergroup to be rucked into a series of east-west folds.

Bottom: Subduction of the paleo-Pacific Oceanic plate under the Falkland Plateau, during the Early Permian period, raised a massive range of mountains.

Uplift and erosion

The weight of the Falkland-Cape Supergroup mountains caused the continental crust of Southern Africa to sag, and the interior lowlands became flooded to form the Karoo Sea (see image above). Sedimentation into this Karoo depression eventually buried the Cape Supergroup layers.

About 180 million years ago, and again 20 million years ago, upliftment of the subcontinent, started an episode of continuous erosion that removed many kilometers of surface deposits and exposed the folded Cape Supergroup sediments. Rocks of the Cape Fold Belt include erosion-resistant sandstones (called the Peninsula Formation) in the Cape Fold Mountains and shales in valley floors.

*A west-east cross section through the Cape Peninsula*

Dotted lines indicate how much of the Cape Fold Mountains has been eroded away.

The Falkland Mountain range had probably eroded into relative insignificance by the mid-Jurassic Period, and started drifting to the south-west soon after Gondwana began to break up 150 million years ago, leaving the Cape Fold Belt to edge the southern portion of the newly formed African continent. Today, the Cape Fold Mountains are a series of parallel ranges that run along the south-western and southern coastlines of South Africa for 850 km.

Table Mountain

Some of these geologic features can be seen at Cape Town’s iconic Table Mountain. Most of the mountain is quartzitic sandstone – the most erosion-resistant layer of the Cape Supergroup rocks.

Winegrowing in the Cape

In 1652, the Dutch East India Company established a station at the southern tip of Africa to provide fresh food to the company's merchant fleet. Jan van Riebeeck, the first governor of the Cape, planted a vineyard in 1655, and on 2 February 1659, the first wine was made from Cape grapes. Van Riebeeck was succeeded in 1679 by Simon van der Stel, who was very knowledgeable about viticulture and produced good wine on his Constantia farm. However, the industry received a significant boost after the arrival in 1680 of French Huguenots settlers who possessed wine-making skills.

South Africa's vineyards are mostly situated in the Western Cape near the coast. We visited several wine farms.

Link: https://www.wosa.co.za/Home/

All images: Wine farm vignettes

Sunbirds

These slight songbirds with thin, decurved bills belong to the family Nectariniidae and provide similar pollination services as do hummingbirds.

Most sunbirds are primarily insectivorous, but also rely heavily on nectar, using their long, pointed bills to reach deep into flowers. Their tongues are brush-tipped and have a tubular shape much like those of hummingbirds. Some species do hover in front of nectar-bearing flowers but they lack the anatomical adaptions that allow hummingbirds perform their spectacular aerial feats.

Sunbirds are predominantly monogamous with biparental care. The nests are typically pendulous, globular structures with an entrance on one side and often a trailing beard of vegetation hanging beneath. Generally, only the female constructs the nest and incubates the eggs. Both parents feed the chicks.

There are 3 endangered species:

Elegant Sunbird, limited to a single island off of Sulawesi.
The Amani Sunbird and Loveridges’s Sunbird, both restricted to extremely small forest reserves in the mountains of eastern Africa.

Southern Double-collared Sunbird, Cape, South Africa

Cape Floristic Region

In order to properly understand the world’s floral distribution, each region is divided into six kingdoms: the Holarctic, Paleotropical, Neotropical, Australian, Antarctic, and Cape Floristic.

The Cape Floristic region is the smallest of the six kingdoms. Located near the southern tip of South Africa, it is the only kingdom that falls entirely within the borders of one country. It is an area of extraordinarily high diversity and endemism, and is home to over 9,000 vascular plant species, of which 69% are endemic.

Vegation types

Much of this diversity is associated with fynbos – meaning ‘fine bush’ in Dutch – , a Mediterranean-type, fire-prone shrubland occurring on acid sands or nutrient-poor soils derived from Cape Supergroup sandstones. Other vegetation types include sandveld, a soft coastal scrubland found mostly on tertiary sands of the Western Cape coast, renosterveld which is a grassy shrubland dominated by members of the daisy family (Asteraceae) and occurs on basic shaley coastal soils, and small pockets of Afromontane forest in humid and sheltered areas.

It is thought that the Cape Floristic Region is experiencing one of the most rapid rates of extinction in the world due to habitat loss, land degradation, and invasive alien plants.

African Penguin

The African penguin is only found on the southwestern coast of Africa. They stand about 24–28 inches tall and weigh 4.9–7.7 lb. Their countershading coloration is protective – the white undersides of the birds make it difficult for underwater predators to see them and the penguins' black backs blend in with the ocean when viewed from above.

African penguins forage in the open sea, where they feed on pelagic fish and marine invertebrates such as squids and small crustaceans, primarily krills and shrimps. They normally swim within 12 miles of the shore and dive for 1-2 minutes to an average depth of 80 ft.

Usually, African Penguins live in colonies on islands, but with a reduction in predator pressure, 2 mainland breeding sites were established near Cape Town in the 1980’s. They are monogamous and pairs return to the same site each year. A clutch of two eggs is laid either in burrows or nests in the sand under boulders or bushes. Both parents incubate and feed the chicks. When penguins moult, they are unable to forage in the sea as their new feathers are not yet waterproof; therefore, they fast over the 3-week moulting period, living on their fat reserves and halving their body weight.

Approximately 4 million African penguins existed at the beginning of the 19th century but populations have declined drastically. The total breeding population across both South Africa and Namibia fell to a historic low of about 20,850 pairs in 2019 and the species is listed as endangered. Threats include egg harvesting, pollution, especially oil spills, and declining prey populations from overfishing, climate change and other causes.

Addo Elephant Park

Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa’s third-largest national park, boasts the “Big Seven” – elephant, rhinocerous, buffalo, lion, leopard, southern right whale and great white shark.

The area had been subjected to substantial hunting pressure since the 1700s. Additionally, farmer ire prompted a government effort during 1919-1920 to exterminate all the elephant. Over time, public opinions morphed and the Park was formed in 1931 to protect the 11 remaining elephant. In 1954 the park contained 22 of these magnificent mammals. Today, there are over 600 elephants.

The Park encompasses five of South Africa’s nine vegetation biomes and the land is mostly semi-arid. Rainfall is relatively evenly distributed throughout the year. There is little natural water; most waterholes are fed by wells.

Left: Ant-eating Chat; Right: Black-winged Kite

Juvenile Ant-eating Chat, Cape, South Africa

Eastern Cape

The coastal area of the Eastern Cape is intersected by a series of rivers. In our area of travel, these included the Bushmans, Kariega and Cowie rivers. We hiked in coastal forest, swam in the coastal lagoons and explored the higher reaches of several waterways.