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Spotting #1500 :) The male is black with an almost 2 ft long tail. He has red and white shoulder patches and a gray bill. In this case, sexual selection has outweighed functionality. Females choose males with longer tails, but anytime it is windy, the male is getting thrown around all over the place and I imagine it's quite annoying to try and fly anywhere. Luckily, they only have the long tail feathers during breeding season. This is my favorite bird from South Africa and I tried my hardest to get great pictures of it :)
Very common in high elevation grasslands, they sit on grass or barbed wire fences normally. This guy put on a show for me, just flying back and forth in front of me for about 10 minutes. In a grassland right outside of Memel, South Africa.
Spotted on Dec 31, 2013
Submitted on Jan 11, 2014
63 Comments (1–25)
very cool
I agree with jamiewgoodspeed! :)
it looks like a red wing black bird with a really long tail :)
What a beautiful progression!
Amazing capture, congratulations!
Great series and congrats...
Congrats Ashley ! Beautiful series !
wow!!Great series AshleyT!!!congratulations!!!!
Cheers, Ashley!
Congratulations
Congratulations!! Great series and beautiful bird, Ashley!!
Congratulations on your 1500th spotting and well-deserved SOTD, Ashley !
Great series - must have been thrilling !! Thanks for sharing.
Awesome series, and beautiful bird. Congratulations on 1500 spottings! I'm getting ready to hit 200 - I'll join the 1500 club one day.. It might just take another year or two, haha.
Congratulations! Fantastic flying series. WOW!
Thanks again Bhagya and Karen! This took some stealth on my part :) We were driving around looking for active burrows in a grassland, and when we stopped to go check out an area with lots of burrows, I saw this guy land in some lower bushes. I snuck as close as I could to him without him seeing me, then when I was about 25m away he either saw or heard me, then just got up and started flying back and forth in front of me and putting on a show :)
Congratulations again for this lovely SOTD Ashley......
Congrats on SOTD! Well deserved. I felt lucky to get a shot of one of these guys perched and at a distance!
Thank you so much Yasser, Cody, Reza, Mark, Luis, Shanna, Rieko, Jason, Antonio, Tom, and Adarsha :) Glad to be able to share this beauty with everyone else!
Love this birdie..Congratulations Ashley!!!
Congrats Ashley! As soon as I saw these pictures I knew it would be SOTD.
Ashley my friend,very cool,congrats on another SOTD and thanks for sharing these African beautys
Congrats! Great timing!!
Congratulations! Wonderful series!
Love this, Ashley!
Congrats Ashley!