One of my lock-down delights have been watching the birds in our garden (for me and the neighbour’s cats).  We have a seed bell and a couple of colorful bird bottles. I used to feed them fruit until I found out, I was actually feeding the resident squirrel.

I am no bird expert but just to name a few of the birds in a typical Camps Bay garden:

Red-winged Starling:

Larger in size, with red-brown flight feathers.

Lesser (Southern) Double – coloured Sunbird:

The male is more colourful (usually a green head, red, blue breast and a longer bill).

House Sparrows:

The call is “chissip: or “cheep-chirp”.

Sugarbirds:

Small, insectivorous and nectar-eating birds with decurved bills adapted to flower-probing.

White-eyes:

Very small, yellow-green birds that glean insects from leaves and probe flowers from nectar.

Bulbuls:

Frugivorous and insectivorous birds with clear whistling calls. We have the Cape Bulbul in our garden.

Mousebirds:

Fruit-eating birds with crested heads, soft, hair-like plumage and long stiff tails.

Rock Pigeons:

Very well known and highly variable in colour. A wild-living domestic breed descended from North Africa and Europe.

Hadeda Ibis:

Identified by heavy, brown body with short legs, decurved bill with red culmen and pink shoulder.

Cape Robin:

Distinguished by white eyebrows, orange upper breast and greyish underparts.

Other birds found in Cape Town include Cape Gulls, African Black Oyster Catchers, Crowned Plovers or Lapwings, Jackal Buzzards, weaver birds, little egrets, swallows, Spotted Dikkops or Thick-knees, Guinea fowl, Crows, Herons, Flamingo, Egyptian geese, South African Shelduck, Yellow-billed Duck etc.