As usual, we did not expect a visit in this area by this beauty.
Even though the visit was spoiled, I managed to get some lovely shots of the visitor.
I got one of them when we visited a shore town called Betty's Bay, as they have a nice nature reserve there, but it is far from here. It is known that sunbirds also love the Protea Pincushions, and I got a few good sunbirds here on the wine farm. For instance, a Malachite and its babies, the Amethyst, the Southern Double-collared sunbirds, and the Cape Sugarbirds. I have posted all of them here in my blog in the past. Now I am so happy to get this new visitor on camera, and I don't know if it will stick around, as something spoiled its visit. I will show you at the end of the post what it is.
The wind was fierce today, and you can see how he battled to stay up high on the pincushion flowers. It is a male Orange-breasted Sunbird (Anthobaphes violacea), and you can judge for yourself if he is beautiful or not.
Some slack in the wind in-between the wind gusts, and I got a still shot of him.
He dropped down onto the lower flowers to avoid the wind.
A real neat and colorful little sunbird, and its a first for us to get it here in our area.
He kept an eye on me, as you can see in the pictures.
And here below the gatecrasher appeared, and he chased the little sunbird away.
It is an adult male Cape Sugarbird (Promerops cafer).
So yeah, I was not quite happy that he chased the little sunbird away, but I know that they are nesting here and he protects his territory.
A real flashy guy this, with his long tail.
I will show you more of the sugarbird in here, as I also got him on another occasion. Only the past two early summer seasons that the sugarbirds started to appear here. We used to see them in the nature reserve by us under the mountain, but there was a severe fire that burnt all the protea bushes down. It was a sad sight to see an old big protea, a tree size, blackened by the fire. Only the snapper turtles survived in the dam, as the rest were all burned, flora and fauna. That was three or four years ago, and things have still not fully recovered in the nature reserve.
It is said that a fire is good for the protea bushes and other fynbos, and they reckon every five years or so of fire will allow new protea and fynbos seeds to grow. Problem is, arson and the weather is causing regular fires which is out of cycle and that is no good. It messes with the eco-systems as they cannot recover as they do in the normal cycle. Another problem that we now have is that our dam levels are dropping big time, and things are slowly starting to become dry due to a lack of rain. We just hope and pray that another fire will not jump up again soon.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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