Community Spotlight: Birding Ecotours

Hello everyone! I’m Ellen Linton, mammalwatching intern extraordinaire, and welcome to the Community Spotlight, a place where we will be highlighting the people, organizations, and stories within the mammalwatching community. These spotlights will cover all sorts of things, from tour companies and guides to conservation projects, mammalwatchers, and other interesting developments in the community. The goal is for the spotlight to be both informative and celebratory, a chance to learn about what’s happening in mammalwatching while also celebrating the people who make our community so great. I’d also love to hear from mammalwatchers who have recently reached a big milestone. Maybe you’ve seen your 500th species, finally found that one mammal that has been your longtime bogey, or accomplished something else you’re particularly proud of. Reach out and let me know so we can give you a shoutout in the spotlight! Furthermore, if you know of something in our community that you believe would make a great spotlight, feel free to message me as well at ellen@mammalwatching.com.

However, for this first edition, I have made the scandalous decision to start off with a birding tour company. Yes you read that right, a birding tour company! However, Birding Ecotours is not your average birding tour company, or at least they seemed different based on the one day mammal tour of the Cape Town area in South Africa that I found on their website, https://www.birdingecotours.com/. With an upcoming trip to South Africa on the horizon, I decided to investigate this tour and find out what Birding Ecotours brings to the mammalwatching world.

When arranging the day trip, I was hoping to be guided by Chris Lotz, the founder of Birding Ecotours. However, he was unavailable and so my guide for the day was Dominic Rollinson. Before I tell you more about him, let’s introduce Chris, as while he wasn’t available to guide me he was able to meet with me for a very fun zoom. Chris founded Birding Ecotours in 2002 in South Africa. He decided to start the company after realizing the academic path of ornithologist was not as good as exploring the world in search of wildlife. He wanted to see the birds of the world and meet people rather than working in a lab. Since then, the company has only grown and now has many employees leading tours around the world. But don’t be fooled by all the birds, Chris is actually a passionate mammalwatcher himself! In fact, he has quite an obsession with seeing three particular mammals: the Numbat, Fishing Cat, and Sand Cat. I was glad to be in the company of another mammalwatcher and I was certainly relieved he considered himself one, since he revealed to me has seen a Ground Pangolin! (I’m definitely not seething in jealousy over here or anything). Now let’s continue with introducing my guide.

Chris Lotz

Dominic, or Dom as I came to know him, grew up in Zululand in South Africa and had completed a PHD on seabirds. I was concerned his interests would be just on the birds, but he quickly put my concerns to rest as we discussed the spots to find my target species: Cape Porcupine, African Clawless Otter, Cape Gray Mongoose, Marsh Mongoose, and Heaviside’s Dolphin. Dom already had spots for several of my targets but was also upfront on what would be more difficult like the otter, porcupine, and Marsh Mongoose. He put together an itinerary starting early in the morning, and by early I mean the sun had not yet risen. We would start off the day at the Cape of Good Hope searching for otters, followed by visiting Rondevlei Nature Reserve for the mongooses, then Hout Bay to scan for dolphins, and ending the trip by visiting a friend of Dom’s who fed porcupines and regularly saw them. After we had arranged everything, my excitement grew by the day. I grew up in South Africa and I really should’ve seen some of these mammals by now. In fact, these species had been haunting me ever since I moved away. But now instead of burning a hole through my life list, they would be written into it with incredible satisfaction.

Dominic Rollinson

Just as Dom had stated, we were picked up from my family friend’s place in Hout Bay at an ungodly hour and started our journey. Accompanying Dom and I was my younger brother, Alex, and our friend, Sebastian. To say that they did not quite understand what they were getting into is an understatement. The drive to the Cape of Good Hope was long but Dom entertained us (or rather me) by chatting about my favorite topic: mammalwatching. By the time we arrived, I was thrilled to learn Dom was quite the mammalwatcher and enjoyed it almost as much as he enjoyed birding. The sun had just started rising when we entered and we stopped to scan with our thermal scopes on the off chance of spotting a Caracal, which can sometimes be seen early in the morning here. No luck on that front but as we continued on we encountered some other great mammals. We saw Mountain Zebra, Bontebok, and Common Eland before arriving at the otter spot.

Out of respect for Dom, I won’t be mentioning the exact location of this fabulous otter spot. And it is truly fabulous because as soon as we exited the car Dom spotted an otter. We immediately rushed over and were delighted to discover six otters!

Cape Clawless Otters, courtesy of                   Alexander Linton

Dom was ecstatic and told me he had never seen so many before and we must’ve spent thirty minutes enjoying our time with them. They were distant from the beach so we clambered over slippery rocks with Dom and Alex going the closest to take photos.

Cape Clawless Otter, courtesy of Alexander                                          Linton

As a young girl, I had dreamed of seeing one of these otters and now adult me was fulfilling her wish. Finally, we decided we had better move on with our day and continue our search for my other targets. On the drive out, we saw some Hartebeest and Chacma Baboons, bringing our total species list to six within a few hours.

As we began the drive to Rondevlei Nature Reserve, Dom warned me about the difficulty of finding a Marsh Mongoose and then proclaimed his shock I had never seen a Cape Gray Mongoose after living in the Western Cape for eleven years. I explained to him that the mongoose clearly had a vendetta against me and my lack of confidence in seeing one. He brushed this off and stated there was no way we wouldn’t see one. He spoke this with such confidence I too started to believe and so I arrived with hope in my heart to Rondevlei Nature Reserve. We spent a while wandering from bird hide to bird hide finding absolutely no mammals and I watched as Dom got more and more baffled by the lack of Cape Gray Mongooses. He muttered to himself, “What is going on?” and mentioned to me they were so common he had never once targeted them before and had still seen them almost constantly. After an hour without a mammal in sight, he switched tactics and took us to Strandfontein.

Strandfontein is a sewage treatment facility and I was struck by the weird obsession animals seem to have with such facilities. Apparently Strandfontein is also a great birding sight but Dom felt it was our best bet to see both mongoose species. The hides at Rondevlei had little water in them but there was plenty of water here to attract the Marsh Mongoose. Plus, Dom had seen Cape Gray Mongoose here a lot. And so, we spent hours driving around Rondevlei without any mongooses and I watched as Dom’s faith was shaken to the very core. His shock had not worn off at lunch and I had accepted that the Cape Gray Mongoose was on a mission to steal all of the otter happiness I had gained earlier in the day. To distract myself, I chatted with Dom about his mammalwatching goals and ignored the feeling of impending doom. He told stories of incredible Leopard, Lion, and Cheetah sightings, which were his favorite mammals to see. I learned that Dom is quite the cat lover, with his first Tiger sighting being a very fond memory of his and both Pallas’s Cat and Snow Leopard being on his most wanted mammal list. I also decided to ask Dom an interesting question: how would he compare birding and mammalwatching? Dom felt they were similar in the aspect of going out to search for a species and spending time in the field, but he felt that mammalwatching took more effort. He said that mammals were less predictable and in lower densities than birds and mammal tours need more time in areas to see their targets than bird tours. A very good point considering how long we had invested in looking for mongooses all the while Dom had pointed out a lot of different bird species we had made zero effort in looking for.

Bontebok, courtesy of Alexander                             Linton

With lunch over, we continued our thorough exploration of Strandfontein by driving around and around across the same roads hoping for a mongoose. Meanwhile, Alex and Sebastian seemed about a moment away from jumping out of the car and drowning themselves in the surrounding ponds. I understood their pain of not seeing a target species and reassured them we would continue looking no matter how long it took. This only made them seem more despondent for some reason but before I could continue on with my attempts to cheer them up Dom noticed something strange down one of the roads. Several guineafowl (one of the best birds in existence) had circled up in a seemingly defensive manner. This is very unusual for guineafowl, who you typically see in very stupid and confusing positions. Suddenly, these guineafowl had adopted war level tactics and so Dom decided we should drive down because the guineafowl would only do that if something had spooked them. We drove up and right as we got there, a Marsh Mongoose ran across the road! It disappeared into the tall reeds but Dom phished it in and it briefly reappeared, showing its adorable little face. While we cooed, the guineafowl squawked in dismay and perhaps in an attempt to intimidate. The mongoose took off with one last look at us and we all high fived. Dom and I felt an exhilaration that only comes from finding a very difficult target species while Alex and Sebastian’s excitement only increased upon Dom’s announcement that we would leave Rondevlei.

From there, we continued our adventure to Hout Bay. Dom had often seen Heaviside’s Dolphin by scanning the bay at an overlook off the highway. We arrived and Dom set up his spotting scope. Just a few minutes after we arrived, I spotted some dolphins. Dom and I were only able to watch them for about a minute and coupled with their distance from us, we weren’t able to identify them to species level ☹ Dom reckoned they were either Dusky or Heaviside’s, but since we couldn’t be sure I couldn’t tick them. We stayed for about a half hour longer in case the dolphins returned but Dom decided we should move on and keep trying for the Cape Gray Mongoose. And so began an odyssey.

Common Eland, courtesy of Alexander Linton

We proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon visiting Soetwater Nature Reserve, and while we were delighted to encounter many more of the wonderfully dumb guineafowl, we saw no mongooses. We then drove several roads in the surrounding area and even Dom was growing quiet. He was full of absolute bafflement at the situation and I was sitting in the passenger seat feeling like I had been given the Dementor’s kiss. Ever heard of sunk-cost fallacy? I am usually a big proponent in ignoring how much time you’ve spent on something if stopping it will improve your life. However, in this instance the sunk-cost fallacy had fully sunk its claws into me. I had fallen into a toxic relationship with the Cape Gray Mongoose, investing hours of my time on what was looking to be a fool’s errand without being able to give up. Meanwhile, Alex and Sebastian were sitting in the back so quietly that I briefly worried they had fallen out of the car. Upon checking on them, it seemed that opening the car door and throwing themselves into traffic was preferable to continuing this mongoose search. Luckily for them, just a few minutes later I briefly saw a mongoose sprint across the road! We were above Simons’s Town on Red Hill Road and I was the only person who saw it. Dom was filled with as much excitement as me to have seen while I head Alex and Sebastian groaning in relief, which for them is basically jumping up and down for joy.

We ended the day visiting a friend of Dom’s, who has a porcupine stakeout at his house. We were joined by Dom’s lovely wife, Jaime, who was also fairly keen on mammals. We spent our time chatting about nature while watching the stakeout but sadly the porcupine never turned up. We stayed well into the night, and even though the porcupine visits very regularly, we didn’t get lucky. Dom had hope we might encounter one on the drive back, but the only species we lucked into was a Cape Genet sprinting across Boyes Drive. While we hadn’t seen the porcupine, the genet proved to be our 10th species of the day, which was the number Dom and I were both hoping to see after our early morning success. Finally, we arrived home to our very worried parents with some hot dinner waiting for us. We thanked Dom profusely, and I cannot say enough nice things about him. A great guide, excellent companion, and most importantly: a true mammalwatcher.

Dom and Jaime

While that concludes the story of a truly excellent mammal day trip, there is still more to say about Birding Ecotours. One thing I asked both Chris and Dom about was their thoughts on mammalwatching as a new form of ecotourism. Both of them believe that it has already made great impacts on the world, using examples like gorilla trekking in Uganda and mentioning how pangolins in Ghana are also starting to garner more interest. They believe in mammalwatching, both in seeing its real world impacts now and in just how far it could go. Because of that, they do offer mammalwatching as part of their longer tours to Namibia, Uganda, Svalbard, and the Kalahari. They also assured me they are working on creating even more mammal tours, so keep your eyes out for that. With all that in mind, I truly believe that Birding Ecotours was the perfect selection for this spotlight. At the moment, they are still fairly bird-focused, but they have a lot of mammal knowledge and are clearly keen to begin implementing more mammalwatching into their company. Of course, I haven’t forgotten about the dual birders and mammalwatchers here in the community. Birding Ecotours is truly a perfect option for anyone with an interest in both groups (although mammals are clearly still superior, naturally!). Thank you again to Chris and Dom for their professionalism, knowledge, and most of all for being great mammalwatchers! I can heartily recommend Birding Ecotours to the mammalwatching community, so visit their website and see for yourself.

Thanks for reading!

Ellen Linton