On Saturday the 30th October 2010 after birding the Bishop Bird Sanctuary in Centurion in Pretoria we headed across town at around 9:30 to find and bird the Chamberlain Bird Sanctuary (Chapter 22 in Birding Gauteng) - a few confusing directions in the book did not help (but where better to stop and ask directions than at Chamberlain's Building Supplies!).

We had to drive around the corner to collect the key for the Sanctuary from the Seniordal Retirement Village which was pretty quick and painless. We parked out front and Drew posed for a pic outside the entrance gate:

We were disappointed to find that there is a lock on the bird hide and we only had a key for the entrance gate (the security guard later told us that he only has the one key). There was no water in the place, apart from a trickle of a stream flowing through the place, so the bird hide would not have been particularly productive anyway.

There is a pathway leading around the bird hide so we concluded that it is common practise to explore the rest of the sanctuary (there are no signs to the contrary!). Once the rains arrive this Sanctuary will really transform into a birding hotspot - because we did not see a single water bird on the day. Helmeted Guineafowl were prevalent, and of course the Southern Red Bishops, Southern Masked Weavers and Thick-billed Weavers were out in full force building nests in the reeds.

In the northern corner of the sanctuary there is are a number of tall trees and we were delighted when we watched a little raptor fly into one of the trees and before long we noticed that there was actually two raptors in the tree. After pouring over these pics (really poor quality due to the height in which the birds were perched and the range of my 300mm lens - it would have been nice if they had flown around and come down to pose for a pic - even one!!!) I concluded that they were Ovambo Sparrowhawk and had the id confirmed on the birding forum.

At the spot where the stream leaves the Sanctuary under the road we did some Phishing and managed to see a number of birds including: Tawny-flanked Prinia, Arrow-marked Babbler, Southern Masked Weaver, Mannikin Bronze and Streaky-headed Seedeater.

We hung around a little longer, having a picnic lunch hoping to see the Ovambo Sparrowhawks again but were disappointed not to catch sight of them again. We made our way back along the eastern perimeter of the sanctuary and took these pics of the scenery in the other direction (ie. towards the bird hide):

A Hamerkop and a Helmeted Guineafowl were pretending to be raptors as they perched in a dead tree:

We saw a Brown-hooded Kingfisher fly past us and even though we tried to follow it we gave up hope of finding it after about 20 minutes of searching. The other sights were of Karoo Thrush, Common Myna, Cape Turtle-Dove, Laughing Dove, Rock Pigeon and Speckled Mousebird. Somewhere along the way Drew managed to snap this pic of the flowers that he had seen:

It had been a good morning and even though we only saw 21 different bird species we had a fabulous time together and the sighting of the Ovambo Sparrowhawks was a highlight for us.