Wetland wonder

ABOUT 200 KILOMETRES north of Johannesburg and straddling the floodplain of the Nyl River, Nylsvley Nature Reserve is a much-visited birding destination in Limpopo Province.

- WARWICK TARBOTON

The major attraction here is the very diverse waterbird community that arrives by the thousand in the occasional years that there is a big flood event, and the 2021/2022 summer was one of these. The flooded area this year extended across 60 kilometers and covered some 16 000 hectares. These big floods only happen about once a decade and they are linked to years of well above-average rainfall, as was the case this past summer.

Herons are typically the first to arrive and 16 species (including Rufous-bellied Heron, Slaty Egret, hordes of Squacco Herons, and Dwarf and Little bitterns) pitched up this year to feed on the fish glut brought in by the flood. Within weeks of the first arrivals, mass breeding got underway, the herons and egrets being joined by Reed Cormorants, Glossy Ibises, and others to establish large, noisy heronries in the reedbeds. A few months later their progeny, some seen in this photograph, were visible in abundance along the floodplain.