Gonubie Mouth Bird Sanctuary

About Gonubie Mouth Bird Sanctuary

The Gonubie Mouth Bird Sanctuary offers visitors and locals to East London a pretty retreat from the city and an interesting peek into the avian diversity of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. This part of the country is rich in fauna and flora, and the sanctuary showcases just some of this, as it is home to about 160 different bird species, as well as a collection of indigenous plants.

Bird watching enthusiasts will love seeing the variety on show here, but this sanctuary is not only for those in the know. Even little ones and those with very little birding experience will delight in the colours, the unique songs, and the cheerful antics of these animals. Some of the species that you may expect to see are the:

• Little grebe
• Purple heron
• Little bittern
• Cape shoveler
• Yellow-billed kite
• Red-billed teal
• Black sparrowhawk
• Black crake
• Water thick-knee
• Kingfishers (pied, half-collared, malachite, and brown-hooded)
• Green wood hoopoe
• Olive woodpecker
• Black-headed oriole
• African stonechat
• Red-capped robin-chat
• African reed warbler
• Cape longclaw
• Sunbirds (grey, greater double-collared, southern double-collared, and amethyst)
• Weavers (spectacled, village, Cape, yellow and thick-billed)
• Southern red bishop
• Olive thrush

Situated in Gonubie, this bird sanctuary is close to some of East London's other attractions, such as the beaches and the shopping malls. The Strandloper Trail is a beach hike that follows the footsteps of the ancient indigenous KhoiKhoi people, and showcases some of the shipwrecks of years passed. This is a five-day trail that starts at Cape Morgan and finishes in Gonubie.

Port Elizabeth and the rest of Nelson Mandela Bay are three hours away from East London, and the world-renowned Addo Elephant National Park is just over two hours away.