US hurricane blows rare bird to Cape reserve

Environment / 8 October 2012, 10:28am

JUNIOR BESTER

Ornithologist Tony Williams and his wife, Zonie were amongst many other 'birders' who swooped to the Rietvlei Wetland Reserve from near and far in the hope to catch a glimpse of a black Skimmer. Picture: Gareth Smit

Cape Town - Avid bird watchers are all headed in one direction – to the Rietvlei Wetland Reserve in the hope of a rare sighting of a black skimmer, never before officially recorded in Africa.

The sighting of the black skimmer (Rynchops niger) near Milnerton, Cape Town, has been a major boost for the reserve after it was photographed during a birding outing. And now bird watchers from across the country are on their way there.

At first, the local birdBill Clinton slept here. He shopped a few blocks away. He had dinner around the corner and down the street.

Everywhere I turned, it seemed, I saw fading photos of the former president smiling into the camera as he shook hands with a beaming proprietor. I could have been in Little Rock, Ark., instead of Antigua.

It has been six years since Bill Clinton's visit, but his star still shines brightly in this Central American colonial city. He was the first U.S. president to visit Guatemala since Lyndon Johnson nearly 30 years earlier.

"It was very exciting," said Mercedes Beteta after I spotted the Clinton photos in her Antigua restaurant during my March visit. The commander-in-chief ate soup, beans and grilled meat and drank Moza, a black Guatemalan beer, when he