20 January 2024: Day 2, Arrive in Johannesburg, South Africa — Highway Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click on right here to see (usually) the place I’m at this time.

Observe: This text was written weeks in the past, based mostly on the tour itinerary. The place I believed I’d be at this time is probably not correct.

Barring one thing surprising, I’ll arrive in Johannesburg at this time at 4:05pm South Africa time (9:05am Pittsburgh time). I’m positive to see a Life Chicken proper off the bat, even from the airplane window. There are a handful of birds on the airport that I’ve already seen — rock pigeons, cattle egrets, widespread mynas (seen in Hawaii) and home sparrows — however all the remainder are new to me. Crossing an ocean and altering hemispheres ensures that just about each chicken is a Life Chicken.

O.R. Tambo Worldwide Airport is an eBird hotspot, maybe as a result of so many (compulsive?) birders go by way of right here. Listed below are 5 birds that everybody sees on the airport — birds of the Previous World, not the New World, so even when they resemble a North American chicken they’re not in the identical genus.

Laughing doves (Spilopelia senegalensis) resemble mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) however their throats are fancier once they puff them in courtship and, as a substitute of mourning, they snort.

Little swifts (Apus affinis) are much like our chimney swifts (Chaetura pelagica) although barely smaller with white throats and rumps. The white options should not simple to see towards the sky.

You’ll be able to inform that the pied crow (Corvus albus) is a crow however he appears to be like mighty completely different. He wears a white vest and is heavier then our American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos).

We don’t have the southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus) in North America. His magnificence and dimension put the home sparrow to disgrace.

Home sparrows have been imported to South Africa simply as they have been to North America. Why did somebody trouble to usher in home sparrows when the South Africa has a extra lovely native, the Cape sparrow (Passer melanurus) additionally known as “mossie.”

By the point I’m on the street to the lodge I’ll have seen no less than 5 Life Birds.

p.s. See a few of my Life Birds for your self on the feeders in Pretoria, South Africa on the Allen Birdcam. Pretoria is 57km (35 miles) north of Johannesburg. (Because of Fran for sending me the Allen cam hyperlink.)

(images from Wikimedia Commons; click on on the captions to see the originals)