Two Bits – 11 December 2015

The tiny little flash of gold and blue sped through the thicket, darting from branch to branch, until at last it came to rest for a while about 10 metres away.
I crept up as close as I dared and managed to snap a few shots of the little fellow before he darted away again. This was my first sighting of the richly coloured African Pygmy Kingfisher, the smaller cousin of our local Malachite Kingfisher but only a summer visitor. Incredible to think that this tiny bird, smaller even than a sparrow, flies all the way from western and central Africa to spend a few months here, then turns around and flies all the way back.
But what better place to spend a little downtime than in the bush around Kruger Park? Time spent in the bush is time well spent. Every year we spend a week in the Sabi Sands area with a group of friends and a top guide, Lex Hes. It makes all the difference to be with someone who knows all the birds, their calls and habits, as well as all the thousands of other facts about the inhabitants of the bush, large and small, animal or vegetable.
The drought is absolutely awful. Most of the dams are bone dry and the grass has been nibbled down to nothing. If the rains don’t come soon, a lot of wildlife will die, let alone the livestock in farming areas. But seeing this happening and knowing the rule never to interfere with the natural order, knowing that there is nothing you can do to change their fate, helps bring acceptance that sometimes there is abundance and at other times there is death. Nature is by turn a giver of life and a grim reaper.
How does the serenity prayer go? “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Watching a lion go about it business, killing and eating its prey, a herd of elephants taking joy in splashing about in a muddy pool, a leopard snarling and roaring to protect her territory from trespass by another, banish all thoughts of the everyday world and our petty disagreements and worries. (Yes, we heard a leopard roar. It’s not as earth-shaking as a lion’s, but it sends chills chasing down your spine all the same.)
We saw tortoises digging their way out of the earth after a brief downpour, desperate for fresh water, just as we saw barbel burying themselves in the thick mud of the waterholes, to go into hibernation until the rains proper come. Everywhere the wheel of life turned, dispensing favours here, disappointment there.
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Did you hear the one about Heyneke Meyer being invited to the same ball as Cinderella?
He went dressed as a pumpkin. When the clock struck midnight, he was hoping to turn into a coach!