The Birding Blog

Attracting a sunbird to your garden can stir up a lot of excitement. Who can resist watching that small, agile little bird, with its magnificent colouring and unique call. The question is, how do we attract them to our gardens? To start off with, sunbirds love the nectar of plants. People try making all sorts of nectar cocktails in an attempt to attract sunbirds, most of which are very difficult for sunbirds to digest. We are very much for nectar feeders, however, we believe in the correct nectar mixture. We wrote a blog post “6 Nectar Feeding Questions and Answers”...

We recently spent some time in the Kruger National Park. Along going on a game drive, we came across a group of Southern Ground Hornbills. While a traffic jam of vehicles stopped for a pack of sleepy lions, just a short distance away we had also stopped, but it wasn’t for the lions. Many shots were fired, camera shots that is, and we watched these amazing birds in total awe of them. These incredible birds inspired me to dedicate a blog post to them. Below are some Southern Ground Hornbill facts, as well as some of my Kruger photographs of them....

You may think that bullying is done on the school playground, but birds have their own bullies to contend with. We’ve discussed which birds can potentially become bullies and what can be done about these “Bird Bullies.” Bird Flocks I know “flocks” is a very broad term, and you are probably thinking “a flock of what?” Well, in our experience any group of birds that becomes too large seems to take over the bird feeders. Take for example, sparrows. A few of them are great to have, fifty of them and every morsel is eaten up, leaving nothing for the...

We’ve had a lot of people ask us questions about nectar and nectar feeders. We’ve decided to write a post explaining everything we know about nectar. Our information is based on research done by Dr Mark Brown (an ornithologist who has studied nectar feeding birds and what makes up the natural nectar they feed on for well over 15 years), Elaine Reed (an avid birder and Owner of Elaine’s Birding and Wildlife Products), her personal experience and research of birds for over 20 years, and our own experience. Where to place the Nectar Feeder? To help the birds find your...

Below we’ve listed 5 birding myths that we’ve been told sometime in our lives that have been proven to be FALSE! 1) Feeding birds results in them not being able to fend for themselves – False Some people worry that if you start feeding birds, you cannot stop, or the birds will starve.  Birds have been taught by their parents how to fend for themselves. If you stop feeding the birds, they will find the food somewhere else. By feeding birds we are actually replacing food sources that have been destroyed by development. Urbanisation results in birds losing nesting spots, shelter and natural...