Cape Talk

We're going to have to leave it there, but we'll definitely be heading over to egojourneys.com to see more of what you explored, Cape Talk. You're listening to the best of talk, recapping the moments worth listening to again. Time for Pin Drop, a weekly travel feature where we drop our pin in a place of interest. For the moment, we're doing South Africa, but we might expand beyond that. And I thought I'd drop the pin today at Stranfonte Sewage Works. Why on earth would you drop a pin at San Francisco?

Sewage works because sewage works are amazing birding destinations. I have been to the Western Treatment Plant Werribee in the state of Victoria in Australia, and I've also been to Hornsby Bend in the United States, and I have been many times to Stranfonte, and Stranfonte does not need to stand back for those two globally celebrated birding hotspots. Mike Buckham is the chairman of the Cape Bird Club. Hello, Mike. Hi, John. Nice to speak to you again. There's an obvious

Reason why sewage plants attract birds, is there not? There absolutely is, John. Obviously, sewage has a high component of nutrients in it, and the water settles in the settling ponds, and there's a lot of nutrients that settle there. And more nutrients means more life in the ponds, and that obviously attracts the birds. So, definitely a good place for birding. And I mean, it's probably one of, if not the best.

Spot to see a very wide variety and high species count of birds within the Cape Metropolitan Boundaries? Absolutely, John. I think it's probably our most popular spot for global tourists, but it's also an incredibly popular spot for South Africans because not only does it have an enormous diversity of just your run-of-the-mill type of birds because of the habitat diversity as well as the nutrient content in the water, but it's also a real hot spot for rarities and nothing gets

The bird is blood pumping faster than a few rare birds that pitch up where they shouldn't be. And are they mostly aquatic birds, birds associated with water generally? Yes, I would say on the whole, I mean, we've had some very rare gulls and terns and wagtails, Franklin's gull, black-headed gull. We've had elegant tern, the first record for the sub-region of elegant tern was found at Strunfentine in the tern roost. But it also attracted.

Some bizarre patereines, birds that are not ordinarily associated with water. The first record for the sub-region and the only record for the sub-region of a bizarre finding of a Rufusdale scrub robin by Peter Steyn and Andre Demblon about 10 years ago, I think. That's a bird that's just normally found in scrub, and it was found on a Sunday afternoon and was there for about three weeks. And that's not a bird ordinarily associated with water. So you

You just generally never know what's going to pitch up at Strantfonte. And the Australian and Texan sites that I mentioned share another feature with Strantfontein, and that is a network of roads that you can drive along. I mean, people do get out of their cars and set up their cameras and their telescopes and so on, but you can quite comfortably do a very good birding visit from the safety and comfort of your motor car. Yes, definitely. There's, I mean, when I think of Strandfontaine,