THE first bird I ever ‘twitched’ (birder-speak for seen and identified) was the common or garden mossie, the Cape sparrow.
It was a humble beginning to many happy years of twitching, at home and abroad, and we’re still at it.
Our first assignment when we moved to the new hide was to set up the red enamel plate that served us so well as a bird bath in the old hide, and we acquired a new, traditional bird bath as well.
Our first visitors were of course mossies. We had the grey-headed sparrow and the house sparrow, and I’m not sure, but possibly the Cape sparrow as well. And they are still with us, in numbers.
They are really quite entertaining, tweeting (the original and proper use of the term, quite naturally) in pleasure as they pick at the wild bird seed we provide or drink and splash in the red dish or the bird bath.
They do enjoy their bird seed.
We were in a very large hardware store-cum-garden centre recently and could not help but notice a female mossie sitting on a 5kg bag of bird seed that she had breached and was enjoying.
Whether she thought she could eat all 5kg in one session I really don’t know, but she was having a good go at it.
We have also often seen mossies in supermarkets – they clearly nest up in the roof and come down to forage, presumably in the aisle marked ‘Pet Food’.
The mossies love to nest in the eaves of the cottages here, including ours.
Very recently we were watching them flitting in and out of a neighbour’s eaves when there was suddenly a commotion (mossies are good at commotions). They seemed to be very excited about something on the roof above them.
We kept watching, and to our amazement a snake suddenly appeared on the roof. From our distance, but with the help of the binoculars, it seemed to be a spotted bush snake.
Anyway, it eventually disappeared behind the weather board, but it was clearly after the eggs that must have been in the mossies’ nest.
Co-incidentally, a snake made an unusual appearance at our back gate just the other day, in the form of a dried skin that had clearly just been shed, possibly a spotted bush snake as well.
As a matter of interest, spotted bush snakes are remarkable climbers and there really is no problem in them getting onto the roof – we once watched one work its way up the side of our timber house, until it finally disappeared under a window sill.
Again, as a matter interest, mossies are pretty common worldwide.
My various bird books show them to be widespread in Britain, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, throughout the Indian sub-continent from Pakistan to Bangladesh, and into the Himalayas, and then much of South East Asia, and of course they feature prominently throughout Africa south of the Sahara.
So, let’s hear it for the dear old mossie.
Cheers!
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
For news straight to your phone, add us on BBM 58F3D7A7 or WhatsApp 082 421 6033
