Birding

​Why is watching birds go about their daily routines so enjoyable and calming?

The Garden Route offers such a diversity of flora with the fynbos and montane forests as well as the coastal regions and inland lakes and with this comes just as a diverse range of bird life. You an step into the outdoors just about anywhere in the Garden Route with your binocular and bird book and soon enough would have added a number of sightings to your list.

The area boasts with bodies of fresh and salt water, coastline with a variety of marine birds, forest, thicket, grasland and fynbos. Popular birding locations would be in the forests such as the Woodville Short Walk or the Elephant Trails at Diepwalle, the Fynbos areas such as the Western Head Conservancy near Brenton in Knysna, The Lakes Area between Sedgefield and Wilderness which has been declared a RAMSA site (see below) or coastal hikes such as the popular Robberg Hiking Trail. The Garden Route is a birder’s dream and we even boast a few endemic bird species.

There are three bird species bearing the Knysna name, the well know Knysna Turaco (Knysna Loerie), the Knysna Woodpecker and the extremely hard to see Knysna Warbler. Apart form the permanent residents there are a number of species that migrate here as well.

Pack your camera and visit these popular birding locations.

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