I KNOW I’ve said this before, but there is something very special about the joy of having birds around.
From that first rousing welcome to the day, the universal dawn chorus, to the often mysterious sounds that emanate out of the darkness while we’re sitting in the Hide, the sounds of the birds is almost constant around here.
I’ve read somewhere that birdsong is a great uplifter of the human spirit and I can readily believe that.
As you know we love our birds, and not just their song, and our recent visit to the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve in Zululand gave us an opportunity for some special sightings. Perhaps the most interesting were the Cape griffon vultures.
We saw our first one sitting in a tree, and then on our return down the same road later we saw at least eight or ten of them circling over the bush a couple of hundred metres off the road. Vultures up there usually mean that there is something for them on the ground and that usually means predators and a kill.
It was exciting just to know that there might well have been lions out there. Apart from the vultures, we ended up with quite a good bird list, but one of the more interesting ones was a crested francolin we met at a view site.
It trotted up to us and inspected the car, then jumped onto the passenger side window sill and discovered the rear-view mirror. This means it also discovered itself, clearly a unique experience for all of us.
Still in the bush special sightings were red-billed oxpeckers on kudu, yellow-billed hornbill, a beautiful white-fronted bee-eater and mocking chats.
The birds in the camp were good too. I’m afraid we secretly scattered some breadcrumbs in front of our hut one day and immediately became the centre of attention. We had southern boubou, black-eyed bulbul, Cape glossy starling, kurrichane thrush, southern grey-headed sparrows and spotted-backed weaver.
There are so many ways of enhancing ones birding experience and we’ve discovered a new one. It’s a book called 500 Common Bird Calls of Southern Africa*, which, quite naturally, comes with a CD of the calls.
It’s by Doug Newman (yes, an amazing coincidence, but no, no relative of the legendary Kenneth Newman) and is really rather fun.
Back home in my study (we’re not the sort of people who travel with the laptop, although this is
probably the right thing to do), we looked up a bird, actually the white-fronted bee-eater because it had created quite a favourable impression, slid in the disc, followed the instructions and lo! In my study was the
white-fronted bee-eater again. (Actually not, because they don’t occur down here, but you get my drift). It is fun and it is useful.
If birds aren’t already a part of your day, try to make them so, you won’t regret it. Cheers!
*500 Common Bird Calls in Southern Africa, Doug Newman, Struik Nature, Cape Town, 2013.
