On Monday the 1st of November, after spending four hours birding the Rooiwal Sewage Works I needed to visit a pleasant smelling spot, so I headed down the R102 towards the Bon Accord Dam (covered in Chapter 35 of Birding Gauteng). The spot looked really good but I was unsure of what bird life I would find, but the young chap asking for R50 assured me that it would be worthwhile (I am not sure what his lifelist stands at - I should have asked). I took the gamble, paid the entrance fee, and pulled into the parking lot where this great sight awaited me:

I spent a little while around the dam wall where I saw Reed Cormorant, White-breasted Cormorant, Cape Wagtail, Grey-headed Gull and Grey Heron.

I then headed off on the road around the dam. There were two groups of fishermen at the water's edge, but no one else. Apparently Saturdays are hectic here! I parked about 500 meters along the road (just past the entrance to the Quad Bike track) and noticed that there were indeed a great amount of birds on the dam, including Little Grebe, Red-knobbed Coot, Blacksmith Lapwing, Cape Turtle Dove, White-rumped Swift, Tawny-flanked Prinia, African Jacana, Grey-headed Gull, Levaillant's Cisticola, Southern Masked Weaver, Southern Red Bishop, Sacred Ibis, Egyptian Goose, Wood Sandpiper, Squacco Heron and Great Crested Grebe.

Here is another scenery pic of the dam:

I then headed off on foot further along the shoreline - coming across Rock Pigeon (that looked like a raptor on the ground - I sheepishly deleted most of the 20 pics I had taken hoping no one had noticed!!!), White-faced Duck, Ruff, Spur-winged Goose, Lesser Striped Swallow, African Reed Warbler (they were all over in the reeds) and Little Egret. Along the way, through the reeds, there are great little paths leading to the water's edge that I would creep along and try and get close enough to the shoreline to get a few pics before birds would start flying off. I wish I could loan Harry Potter's invisibility cloak! Imagine the pics I could get using it!!!

Near the bottom of the day (close to the main road the borders the Western side of the dam, I found a neat little spot - with an island in the middle of the small bay - where four Pied Avocet were feeding as well as Little Stint, juvenile Blacksmith Lapwing and Wood Sandpiper.

On my way back towards my car (believe it or not I ran out of memory space as I had left one of my two back up disks in the car - so I had to carefully delete a few duplicate pics - always risky - and use the Canon Powershot to get some shots as well - I think I have learnt a lesson!!!) I had a great sighting of a Black Heron, as well as Black-winged Stilt, two Diderick Cuckoo, Pin-tailed Whydah, Common Moorhen, African Jacana and Arrow-marked Babbler.

I spent some time trying desperately to get decent pics of the Whiskered Tern hunting over the water, but it just never came close enough for me to "get the shot"!

Here is a scenery pic looking back towards the entrance:

I had lunch before heading back to the entrance area where I spent another 20 miuntes around the dam wall watching Pied Kingfishers hunting fish. I saw a Green-backed Heron fly off when I approached the water's edge and land near the dam wall. There is a little Jetty on the dam wall and I noticed that it is a great spots for birds to perch.

A Fork-tailed Drongo sighting ended my time at the Dam - with a final count of 39 bird species seen in the 2 hours that I spent there.