Soutpan, in search of the elusive Baillon's Crake. . .

Water everywhere is what comes to mind when thinking of Soutpan in the heart of the Free State, at least at the moment. And with all the water there is an amazing amount of waterbirds in the area with fast amounts of Ducks, Geese, Moorhens, Coots, Stilts and Avocets.

Common Moorhen

One of the primary reasons to visit the area was to try and find the Baillon's Crake which have been spotted at the pan on numerous occasions the last couple of weeks. Yet after three separate trips we still could not find it.

Not that any one of these trips where a waste of time as we witnessed a wonderful spectacle, a once in a lifetime event for the Free State. In total we saw 87 species with lots of great memories among them. Barbet added 13 lifers to her list, while I added 8!

Al the Malachite Kingfishers about the area surely has to count as one. At one point we had six or seven of these beautiful birds in the same tree. Not to mention all the other individual sightings which would amount to probably twenty times the amount of Malachite's I've ever seen combined!

Malachite Kingfisher

As I've mentioned earlier ducks where in abundance and not a minute would go by without seeing or hearing some. These Fulvous Ducks where one of the newbies on our life list.

Fulvous Ducks

What was quite interesting to see was how certain species tended to stick to certain areas of the pan, like these Southern Pochard's which where found predominantly on the Western side of the pan.

Southern Pochard

What I believed to be Zitting Cisticola's where also around usually in pairs.

Zitting Cisticola

Then another one of the amazing spectacles around where hundreds of the Black-winged Stilts.

Black-winged Stilt

About ten Whiskered Terns where catching fish towards the center of the pan while a pair of African Fish-Eagles where calling from the Southern end of the pan.

Whiskered Tern

We counted a total of 11 different species of Ducks/Geese on two of the three days.

Fulvous Ducks

Another newbie for the day and such cute little "ducks".

Cape Teal

The Soutpan area is truly magnificent and I will definitely be returning soon hopefully to find the elusive Baillon's Crake!

How it all began

From a very young age our family have been visiting the Kruger National Park on an annual basis.  This was the beginning of a life long love and passion for nature.

Only recently (2009) thought have we discovered the amazing world of birding, and have been hooked since.
The wise words "change is as good as a holiday" played a vital role as our annual Kruger trip got replaced with a trip to the town of St. Lucia.

For those not familiar with the area it boast an incredible amount of bird-life in the many diverse ecosystems, ranging from the ocean to mangroves, dune forests, savanna, woodlands, wetlands and mountains.  While on this trip we visited the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve as well as the isiMangaliso Wetland Park.  Still newbies to birding we could barely identify a handful of specimens without The Book!

From there we returned to the Free State and our home town of Bloemfontein.  Our next outing was to Pretoria where we added not only a few more birds to our almost non-existing list, but also a wonderful comrade and member of the family.

It took many hours, pain, endurance and plenty of wonderful memories to reach the current day and date with yet a day to come where we have not loved our new hobby/passion in life. . .