THE DUNE LARK
At four o'clock, Glen, Ulricht, and I headed out to search for Namibia's one and only truly endemic birds, the Dune Lark. It is only found here in the sand dunes. Norma decided to have a pool afternoon and stayed behind to enjoy the frigid waters.
The bird is very elusive and when we pulled into the parking area where it had been seen, Glen girded himself for battle - arming himself with a camera with at least an foot-long telephoto lens plus his birding scope which has a range of 60 power and binoculars. We no sooner stepped out of our vehicle, when both Glen and Ulricht spotted a bird. Sure enough it was the Dune Lark. This bird was right in front of us - about five feet away. But it came even closer running right by my feet! It darted under the vehicle and came out the other side where even I, with my small camera, was able to take its picture. After about five minutes it flew off to the top of the mountain where it would have taken us days to find it - if at all. Talk about luck. Glen said that that had never happened to him before in all his years of birding. Since we're were only there ten minutes at the most, we decided to spend the rest of the time allotted to searching for the elusive and rare brown hyena. We saw paw prints about an hour old and some scat that he uses to mark his territory but sadly no hyena. We had had enough good luck for one day. The drive was an adventure as we nearly got stuck several times in soft sand - it wasn't really a road we were on but a lightly used track. Good thing Ulricht is a good driver.
At four o'clock, Glen, Ulricht, and I headed out to search for Namibia's one and only truly endemic birds, the Dune Lark. It is only found here in the sand dunes. Norma decided to have a pool afternoon and stayed behind to enjoy the frigid waters.
The bird is very elusive and when we pulled into the parking area where it had been seen, Glen girded himself for battle - arming himself with a camera with at least an foot-long telephoto lens plus his birding scope which has a range of 60 power and binoculars. We no sooner stepped out of our vehicle, when both Glen and Ulricht spotted a bird. Sure enough it was the Dune Lark. This bird was right in front of us - about five feet away. But it came even closer running right by my feet! It darted under the vehicle and came out the other side where even I, with my small camera, was able to take its picture. After about five minutes it flew off to the top of the mountain where it would have taken us days to find it - if at all. Talk about luck. Glen said that that had never happened to him before in all his years of birding. Since we're were only there ten minutes at the most, we decided to spend the rest of the time allotted to searching for the elusive and rare brown hyena. We saw paw prints about an hour old and some scat that he uses to mark his territory but sadly no hyena. We had had enough good luck for one day. The drive was an adventure as we nearly got stuck several times in soft sand - it wasn't really a road we were on but a lightly used track. Good thing Ulricht is a good driver.
Comments
Post a Comment