To celebrate my kids successfully passing another grade in high school we decided to do a little Cliff Jumping to celebrate (we are a strange bunch after all) and to ensure that we could get a little birding done as well we headed off to Nkwe Caravan Park on Lynnwood Road (from the N1 you take the Lynnwood Road offramp - and travel south on the M6 for about 15 kilometers and Nkwe is on the right hand side of the road). We arrived at 8 o'clock and unpacked at the picnic spot by the spot where the cliff jumping takes place. I have included a pic to prove of me jumping to prove that I truly crazy! The spot is truly beautiful and there is a bush camp on the other side of the caravan park that is well worth exploring as well. Apparently the stream that flows through the place is the Pienaar's River.

My wife and I went off to atlass the area while the kids stayed at the rock pool. We saw a total of 41 bird species with the highlights being African Paradise-Flycatcher, Spotted Flycatcher, Purple Heron, Cape Grassbird (which sure knows how to hide away in grass alongside a river), Diderick Cuckoo, Bronze Mannikin (we watched it building a nest), Lesser Swamp Warbler and both Brown-hooded and Woodland Kingfishers. Here is a selection of pics that I took of the birds:

I captured this sequence of Cape Wagtails - and am not sure if it was a mating moment, or a juvenile trying to get a snack from a parent (you can see that one bird has something in it's beak):

Here is a full list of all the birds that we saw during the morning we spent there: Dark-capped Bulbul; Diderick Cuckoo; Green Wood Hoopoe; African Palm Swift; Cape Turtle Dove; Lesser Striped Swallow; Cape White-eye; Cape Wagtail; Crowned Lapwing; Hadeda Ibis; Southern Masked Weaver; Crested Barbet; Cape Robin-Chat; Laughing Dove; Common Myna; African Black Duck; Cape Grassbird; White-rumped Swift; Southern Boubou; African Paradise Flycatcher; Woodland Kingfisher; Cape Glossy Starling; Bronze Mannikin; Southern Red Bishop; Tawny-flanked Prinia; Lesser Swamp Warbler; White-throated Swallow; Common Moorhen; Black-collared Barbet; Fork-tailed Drongo; Brown-hooded Kingfisher; Bar-throated Apalis; Black Cuckoo; Purple Heron; Southern Grey-headed Sparrow; Spotted Flycatcher; Cape Weaver; Little Grebe; Fiscal Flycatcher; Cattle Egret and Groundscraper Thrush.