After our very successful day birding along the Sani Pass into Lesotho we spent 16 August travelling to Eshowe, which is located 330 km up the coast from Underberg. We started the day by birding the Marutswa Forest close to where we spent the night and on the short drive to the forest saw a Long-crested Eagle on a power line. The day was cloudy which didn’t make photography easy but we still got reasonable shots of a good range of birds. A highlight of the Marutswa Forest was seeing the rare and endangered Cape Parrot.
By late morning we’d finished at Marutswa Forest and continued our journey towards Eshowe, stopping after lunch at Sappi Stanger, which is a site near the coast with a lake and a good range of birds on the water and in the surrounding grassland.
When we’d finished our very successful birding session at the Sappi Stanger Lake we drove to Eshowe where we were staying for two nights at the Birds of Paradise lodge. It was set in extensive gardens and provided an excellent base for exploring the Dlinza and Ongoye Forests on our full day in the Eshowe area.
