I haven’t been doing my Africa posts in chronological order, so once I have finished them all I will make a post with the links to them in order.

This week I wanted to share some photos of Weavers, which are amazing little birds. Not only are they gorgeous, but they build beautiful nests that look extremely precarious! I took these photos at the small dam at Saddle and Trout. The trees were absolutely full of Cape and Southern Masked Weavers, and in the morning they’d set up a buzzing racket while building their nests and showing off. Watching them build their nests is fascinating, it looks to be a difficult process using only a beak, but they can weave grass quite deftly even when their branch is bobbing in the wind. It was nice to be able to see nests in progress as well as completed nests with babies in them.

Photographing them proved a challenge, as their nests in the trees were high overhead. Shooting straight up with a 200-400mm lens isn’t great for neck and back muscles! This was remedied by standing a little up on the hill and shooting across part of the dam at the nests on the waters edge. It gave a nice perspective being level with the nests, and a nice background of the foliage on the other side of the dam. The weavers would perch in the tree before launching up to their nests, so we could anticipate their movements and try for some flight shots.

I spent a lot of time just watching them. It’s nice to not look through the viewfinder every now and then and see the bigger picture!