A common broom like flower out right now. Taken this afternoon.


Fri/Sat update Dec 28,29

Today was pretty quiet. House: House sparrows, white spectacled bulbul, sunbird;
The sunbird was perched on the wrought iron gates of the french windows where there are often a few cobwebs. Husband thought he was after spiders or spider webs. Sunbirds use spider webs extensively in their nest building but it would be a pretty keen bird to be already building now.

in and around the valley, feral pigeons, Hooded crows, black redstarts, blackbirds, Syrian woodpeckers, graceful warblers. Senegal doves, jackdaws, white wagtails also around.

Sun Dec 30
Range 4-12 degrees C, very light south easterlies, humidity just 41%
From the house during the day heard house sparrows, white spectacled bulbuls, jackdaws, brief sunbird, brief white wagtail and cooing up to 4 notes of laughing dove close by.
Heading down shortcut to valley road heard full blackbird song and brief great tit song.

Hooded crows headed back to windsurfer hill in dribs and drabs, small groups. Husband had noticed they were pretty spread out in foraging on the hillslopes to the north, and, as yesterday, the returned as they had foraged, not as large flocks for a change.

Female (or immature) black redstart on prominent perch of acacia tree for a while. Graceful warbler called up there towards the pumping station. We heard the trilling alarm call of rock hyrax and saw a big old blonde job doing sentry duty on a boulder way up the slope. They have to watch out for feral cats and dogs on that slope all the time.

Too many kids around look-out corner today to go down there, they'd have scared away most of the stuff, which is why we contented ourselves with valley road, usually quite rich especially around the pumping station. By the time we got there the dusk cold was really nipping at my fingers.