[Tweeters] off-topic RFI Cape Town

[Gary Bletsch]

Dear Tweeters,
Next winter I'll be birding in Namibia with a friend, but am considering continuing on my own in Cape Town, since I have to fly through there anyway. I birded Kruger NP in 1999-2000 (Y2K), but that was in a small group, not solo. Even so, there were a few areas we visited, between Johannesburg and Kruger, that seemed sketchy, to say the least.
Any advice as to a short soujourn in the Cape Town area with a local birding guide/driver would be appreciated. South Africa is not a country where I'd feel all that safe travelling solo with a bunch of expensive optics.
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch
PS Since there was a thread recently about Trumpeter Swans and Snow Geese in September, I will toss in my two cents' worth. In about 30 years of birding in Skagit County, I observed only two occurrences of lone Trumpeter Swans in September, plus one observance of three Tundra Swans. The Trumpeter stayed for about three weeks. Both occurrences were on the river bar in Lyman. By contrast, over the same three decades, I observed Snow Geese in nine different Septembers. The last few years, 2017-2021, I saw them every September. I think that an active observer who pays repeated September visits to Samish Flats and Fir Island would be likely to find a few small flocks of Snow Geese.
We have already had one observation of Trumpeter Swans this month in Western New York, oddly enough.
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