Best Birding Guide to Kruger National Park

Kruger Park is a compelling experience for those open to the drama of the natural world. The vast plains, woodland savanna and riverine gallery forests are a deceptively tranquil stage upon which life and death are ever at odds...

All birds have a preferred habitat with a specialised niche within... thus to see as many bird species as possible, it's necessary to know their preferred habitats...

The origin of today's bird migration patterns to Kruger Park may lie in the Ice Age of approximately 15 000 years ago. Ornithologist GL Mclean suggests that many European birds...

Birdsong is the soundtrack of the bushveld. One of the joys of birding in Kruger is to be up early enough to experience the dawn chorus of doves and other early risers that mark the start of the bushveld day...

Of the 900 or so recorded bird species in southern Africa, approximately 500 can be seen in Kruger, including rarities that are seen nowhere else in South Africa...

It always helps to know your subjects movements, an anticipate its activity. This is best done by understanding the relationship between seasons and climate...

'There is a strong cultural link between the African ancestors and birds. For centuries, African people have been using indigenous birds to treat illnesses...

Birding in Kruger is a dynamic experience because of the ever-shifting nature of the African landscape. Habitats exist at the mercy of climate changes...

Kruger's sheer size and diversity of habitats have given sanctuary to bird species that may otherwise have disappeared from southern Africa...

Human intervention has generally been beneficial for birding in the Park. For a start, proclamation of the original Sabi Game Reserve in 1898 was a visionary act...

Of the 500 or so species found in the Park, about half are summer visitors, with a more or less equal split between breeders and non-breeders...

There are often good raptor sightings in grasslands within the mopaneveld, particularly of rarer species like Pallid and Montagu's Harriers. Many of the grassland species of the south, such as rollers and hornbills, are also found here...

Most scientists are in agreement that birds evolved from egg-laying, predatory dinosaurs that existed during the Triassic some 225 million years ago...