WE all know that the cry of the fish eagle is always described as the quintessential call of Africa, but is it?
As you know we’ve moved to a new hide in a somewhat more urban setting, and yet within hours of moving in we were quite certain that we had heard a fish eagle.
Enquiries followed and we were assured that indeed fish eagles could be heard around here – not often seen, but frequently heard.
It is indeed a wonderful call as they are wonderful birds, but do they really deserve the top spot as the call of Africa?
Far more ubiquitous is the good old hadeda with its distinctive cry.
We had them in Johannesburg and the morning we left Gauteng for ever they came out in force to see us off, crying, or so we thought, “Ha, ha, you’ll-be-back, ha ha, you’ll-be-back!”
And when we arrived in our new home on the coast who was there to welcome us? The hadedas of course, lots of them.
And who was here to welcome us to the new hide, the hadedas of course, lots of them.
Hadedas come in for a lot of bad press, mainly because they are extremely noisy, particularly in the early morning and early evenings.
Our neighbours in Johannesburg hated them, as indeed do so many people, and yet they are really quite magnificent birds, particularly their colouration – note their wings when the sun is on them – and those extraordinary beaks.
As a matter of fact a cohort has just flown by, indeed the call of Africa.
To move on, it’s finally happened, haggis has conquered the sassenachs. It’s reported from Edinburgh that haggis sales have leapt from 235 tons for export in 1996 to at least 1,554 tons today.
Some 60 percent of those orders are coming from south of Hadrian’s Wall, from England no less, but it’s understood that the American FDA (Food and Drug Administration) may be about to relax its ban on the importation of sheep’s lung, a key haggis ingredient, and that haggis may soon be on menus in the United States, where about 10-million citizens claim Scottish descent.*
This is all good news and may haggis become more freely available down here. We love it and never mind what it’s made of, it’s wonderful stuff.
An early experience of haggis was eating it on a roll while gazing out over Loch Ness in Scotland, desperately longing for a glimpse of The Monster.
It was not to be of course, but we did become hooked on haggis.
There’s a wonderful story from my days on radio long, long ago – a very well-known newsreader was slipped a late story for one of his evening newscasts, which went something like this: “It’s just been announced in Edinburgh that the official haggis hunting season in Scotland has been declared open…..” and so on and so on. He was never to live it down, bless him.
Cheers!
*The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media.
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