Solo Birding trip to St Lucia - Episode 2: Afternoon guided birding walk on the Igwalagwala Trail

Hi guys
So I finally made a trip down to St Lucia in Northern KZN after making initial enquiries in June last year. I had one goal in mind - get the last Kingfisher I needed to complete the Southern African Kingfisher list, the Mangrove Kingfisher.
After car troubles in the morning I got out to do a guided bird walk on the Igwalagwala trail with Ian from St Lucia Birding. Igwalagwala is the general name for Turacos in Zulu (based I think on the sound they make). The trail is in the thick forests just on the edge of St Lucia Town and has some generally wider paths for walking, while Ian took us down some narrower hippo paths in search of special birds such as the elusive flufftail. While I added 4 new species and missed out on the flufftail and do not count the blue mantled flycatcher yet even though he responded to a call, I thoroughly enjoyed the walk with Ian and the thrill of trying to find some of the forest birds. The trail looked like a maze to me for the first time I visited and I think one could easily get lost in the forest to be careful if walking the trail alone.

A suggestion is take a daypack along for water and to carry things like tabbard and sunblock to reapply. The walk must get extremely sweaty in the summer time.

Vlog of the whole St Lucia Trip:
   • My solo birding trip down to St Lucia...  
Car troubles:
   • Car troubles and early morning birdin...