For those of you who missed it, the answer to What Bird Is This? #34 was the Montagu’s Harrier. Well done to everyone who pieced the riddle together.
For this one, the sighting in question wasn’t a single bird, but well over a hundred of them, passing high over Londolozi and heading north. A run of cold days combined with the shortening daylight seems to have flipped a switch and triggered the start of their long migration.
The photograph this month is deliberately inconspicuous, so you’re going to have to lean on the riddle a little harder than usual.
The Riddle of the Northbound Flock
We are not creatures of the trees,
Our home is on the inland seas.
A hundred strong we take to flight,
And point our wings to the northern light.
Drop your guesses in the comments. The answer will be revealed in this Sunday’s Virtual Safari.
Great White Pelicans !
Sean, Are they Flamingos? They are usually flocks…
Ciconia ciconia
I’m guessing it’s a Common Swift….
Hello Sean, I think it is a Osprey, Fish hawk, Pandion haliaetus. Love this challenge! Thank you for it!
The easiest would be the Lesser Flamingo but I doubt that the Northern Lights can be seen in Sub Saharan Africa, since I am Swedish how about the White Stork (Ciconia ciconia)? I know they return from Africa and I believe I have seen them in salty marshes/inland seas in Africa in nature shows?
A kind of storks or cranes?
Pelicans
Hi Sean, this riddle is certainly a head scratcher. I think it looks like white pelicans.
White Storks perchance?
White Stork