The first one is a teenager, and the second one is still a baby.
A typical teenager, out alone to investigate its new world, and I managed to get some good shots of it (4 shots). Then the little baby chaperoned by the mom (3 Shots), and finally I will show you what an adult male Robin looks like (1Shot).
It is now Spring season here in South Africa, and there are new young birds all over the place. The young malachite babies are now also out of the nest, but after a thorough 2 hour search, I cannot get them on camera yet, as their parents hide them in the dense bushes. But I have patience, and I know that I will get them, once they have learned to eat in the open on the pincushion flowers.
The little Cape Robin-chats (Cossypha caffra) are another story, as they don't eat on the pincushion flowers, and they rather scratch between the fallen leaves in their search for worms. But they don't only eat worms and insects, as they also like bread crumbs and grated cheese. A problem is that they constantly move around very fast, and one can seldom get good shots of the little ones, so on this day I was very happy to get them on camera.
This one is really a very cute little critter.
I could only get two shots of the baby, as the mom hustled it into the surrounding bush.
Small and cheeky already, as it looked at me.
And here the mom started to chase the baby into the nearby bushes.
Finally, I will show you below what a male adult Cape Robin-chat looks like.
We have some great weather issues here, and the weather bureau agrees with me, as down here in the south of the country we now have very hot days, 35C, but in the north of the country it seems to still be stuck in winter as they have temperatures of 12C with rain and thundershowers, even floods in some areas. My wife's parents still live up north and they say that the weather over there is really miserable.
We only discovered it when we moved down here to the southern tip of the African continent, and I can tell you that we also struggled at the beginning to get used to the strange weather patterns here. However, the birds don't seem to mind as they just carry on with their lives, and thankfully it's also a lesson to us on how to go about our own lives. Someone said;
"When we understand that each day isn't one more day, but one less,
we'll start giving more value to the things that truly matter" (author unknown).
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
Until next time, cheers!