Western South Africa: Cape Endemics, Namaqualand Wildflowers and the Kalahari

This birding tour lies firmly within the endemic-rich zone of western South Africa, and sees us focusing much of our time getting to grips with the many rare and highly localized birds found only in this region, and is certainly a must for any world birder. Additionally, we time this tour to best coincide with the annual flower blooms along the west coast of South Africa and in the Namaqualand region. Although these blooms can be unpredictable and vary from year to year, we have selected the best dates to allow us a greater chance of seeing these incredible floral carpets. The experience of seeing dazzling rafts of yellow, orange, white, blue and purple flowers covering vast areas of this otherwise arid, rugged landscape is a sight to behold, and is one of the ultimate natural experiences anywhere in the world!

The bizarre Secretarybird should be seen on this trip.

This carefully-designed Cape, Kalahari and Namaqualand birding tour has been specifically developed to try and find the maximum number of endemic and regional specials occurring in this unique part of the world. We include time in key habitats, including fynbos, renosterveld and the greater Nama-Karoo, and these together offer up almost all of western South Africa’s most prized birds, which should result in a hefty list of endemic and near-endemic species. Although set up to primarily focus on the birds of the region, we also dedicate some time on this tour to track down mammals, and indeed we should end with an impressive array of cats and other animals. Incorporating a visit to the world famous Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, one of Africa’s greatest game parks, gives us opportunities to see the incredible black-maned Lions of the Kalahari, along with other cats (often including Cheetah and Leopard, plus smaller species; African Wild Cat is unusually common here), and some of the lesser-known mammals of this region, including the strange Bat-eared Fox and many others. The charming Meerkat (always a crowd favorite) is truly at home on the Kalahari dunes, along with some of its poorer-known relatives like Yellow Mongoose.

The incredible Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of the best places to see Lions!

We begin this tour in Cape Town, the ‘Mother City’ of South Africa. Here we spend a short while familiarizing ourselves with some of the more widespread species along with  a plethora of fynbos habitat endemics such as Cape Rockjumper, that can be found amid some of Africa’s most splendid scenery! Following our time in and around Cape Town, we transfer a short distance up the west coast to the small coastal village of Langebaan, where we call in for a couple of days. This area gives us further opportunities at more of the country’s endemics, such as Southern Black Korhaan, along with giving us our first opportunity to witness some of the dazzling flower displays that often dominate the west coast of South Africa at this time of the year.

We then progress into Namaqualand, where we bird the endemic-rich, beautiful desert mountains of one of the most famous flower areas on earth. Like the fynbos, Namaqualand also has a huge plant diversity, and its spring flower shows make it world-famous. In addition, we can also access the desert coast just south of the Namibian border. Some of the highly prized species we’ll be searching for here include the likes of Cinnamon-breasted Warbler, Karoo Eremomela and Dune Lark, amongst many others.

Next, we head inland for some extremely localized birds inhabiting the region called Bushmanland. Here, we will focus our efforts on species such as Red, Stark’s and Sclater’s Larks, along with others such as Karoo Korhaan, Namaqua Sandgrouse and Namaqua Warbler (all of these are essentially restricted to the Northern Cape Province of South Africa and Namibia, except for Red Lark which doesn’t extend into Namibia)

Many sought-after specials can be seen on this tour, such as this Karoo Eremomela.

Without a doubt, one of the main attractions of the tour follows, and sees us heading for one of Africa’s great game parks: the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. A stop en route sees us bird the surroundings of the impressive “waterfall in the desert” (Augrabies Falls) and its associated gorge! The vast Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, extending into neighboring Botswana, is on a par with Kruger and Etosha National Parks and is set in one of South Africa’s most remote wilderness areas, wedged between Namibia and Botswana. Not only is this game park inhabited by some of Africa’s most charismatic megafauna such as Lion and Gemsbok (Southern Oryx), but it also hosts many vibrant southern African endemic birds like Crimson-breasted Shrike, Swallow-tailed Bee-eater, Southern Pied Babbler, Kori Bustard and Black-faced Waxbill. This park is also a truly phenomenal place for raptors and owls, many of which we should see during our stay. The tour comes to an end following our time in this great wilderness area, in Upington, set on the banks of the mighty Orange River.

Kori Bustard, the world’s heaviest flying bird, occurs in the Kgalagadi.

This tour is set at the beginning of our South African ‘core’ tour period, and can be combined with several of our other tours. We recommend that you combine it with our very exciting and wonderfully complementary (because it includes such a vastly different set of birds and mammals in eastern South Africa) Kruger National Park and Escarpment Birding Tour. This tour can also be combined with our similar Kalahari Mammal and Birding Tour (which sees us focus more time on trying to find some of the rarer and more elusive nocturnal mammals of the Kalahari such as Aardvark and, with luck, Black-footed Cat).