Rare Visitors

Common Waxbills 1

Look what I found in my garden the other day!

In all the years I’ve lived here I have never seen this little bird before.

Common Waxbills 2

I identified them from my excellent bird book; Newman’s Birds of Southern Africa, as the Common Waxbill. I don’t know about common, but it certainly isn’t common in my garden! I would have thought perhaps in a bird sanctuary in the wetlands or vlei.

They have that distinctive red beak and eye stripe and are quite tiny.

Common Waxbills 3

From the photo above, I think the bird on the left was a fledgling and the bird on the right was a parent, keeping a watchful eye out for danger as he encouraged the youngster to feed.

Common Waxbills 4

They seemed to be eating the grass seeds along the poolside.  The photo above is fairly blurred, but you can just make out the fledgling pulling at some grass.

Common Waxbills 5

And this last photo shows how far away they were (and why the photos are fuzzy!). I was standing way back inside the house, with Little Monkey in front of me. Any attempt on my behalf to move forward for a better shot would have resulted in LM springing into action and dashing straight at the little birds, in her mind chasing away the “intruders”!

But it just goes to show, that weeding your garden is not always the best thing to do, because if I had done so, then these little guys would never have popped by for a visit.

And my life would have been the poorer for it!