Birds

Yesterday morning I found this small group of mouse birds breakfasting in my vegetable garden. These birds are primarily vegitarian, eating fruit, flowers, young leaf buds, and in the case of these birds, having a breakfast of letuce leaves and pumpkin flowers. Mouse birds don't flit from branch to branch in a tree, like other birds, but scurry along the branches and up and down the trunk of the tree. From a distance the birds look like mice climbing around in the tree with their long tails.  

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These are Speckled Mousebirds, (Colius striatus) 

The long tail of these birds can be seen clearly in this photo. 

Other birds would sit on the wire, these hang from it.

One of the Weaver bird species, a juvenile I think, as I could not identify it  in  Roberts Bird Guide

Late afternoon on Saterday I photographed this bird of the Wagtail family. (I could be wrong). My Roberts Bird Guide, describes over 900 species of Southern African birds but I could not find anything that matched the markings of this bird.

The markings on this bird are unmistakable, looks like it's wearing a cap, double black collar  bands bands interspersed with a white strip, white belly, red circle around the eyes and black beak.

These little birds are quite comfortable with humans close by. As you can see from the angle of this photo, very close, and still striding towards me.