Garden and mine sigthings

This tiny kingfisher visits my garden regularly every night. I have little bird ponds sunk in two areas of flower beds. One is a hollowed out rock and the other is an old plow shear. Every night as dusk begins to fall, the African Pygmy-kingfisher lands on a mango tree branch in one side of the garden. Then it swoops down, bill open,  over the water in the plow shear and lands on an avocado tree branch in the middle of our patio. It swallows the water, shakes its feathers, then flies down across the water surface, repeats the action, emerging to land on the mango tree again. It does this several times while we're there. Recently two birds arrived, so perhaps it is bringing its mate to partake of refreshments offered in the Hedges shamba! 

All images above: African Pygmy-kingfisher

On one of our night drives while Grant does an inspection of the mine and I look out for wildlife and night birds, we stopped near the area where we'd previously photographed the family of Spotted Thick-knee several weeks ago. In the road was a small Spotted Thick-knee which we're sure is the baby-now juvenile of that family. There were no other adult Spotted Thick-knee in the area so we're surmising that the youngster is now out on its own!

Spotted Thick-knee juvenile out hunting on for food on its own

The Spotted Thick-knee juvenile throws a definite shadow in the light of our torch

We found it exciting to think that this juvenile survived and is now looking out for itself! You can see previous posts about this Spotted Thick-knee family here and here. 

Thanks for all your visits and comments and kind thoughts when I was ill. I am definitely better now and dashing about trying to sort out Guest House menus, food lists, shopping and accommodation before going out on leave to South Africa in two weeks' time.