“We’re immigrants, emigrating away from the alternatives. And our alternatives were a townhouse in what has become part of the Greater Witwatersrand, with wall-to-wall concrete, pseudo-Tuscan monstrosities and golf courses from horizon to horizon – razor wire, security guards who come by the square metre, shopping malls and all the rest of the paraphernalia that has become the ‘model’ for modern living”.
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Does that ring a bell? If it does, you have a very good memory because it was the opening to my very first ‘From my Hide’ in January 2005, 14 years go. Moving out of the Big Smoke and down to the lower South Coast was one of our best life decisions, we love it here.
How simply great to live in an environment that still supports wildlife – genets and other cats, bushbuck and duiker, bush pig, the big guys out at sea (whales and dolphins) and truly fantastic bird life. The weather is pretty good too.
I think it fair to say that I have been able to bring you news of the earth’s extraordinary biodiversity, from the skies above, all the continents, right down to the deepest depths of the oceans. It’s been fun too.
Think about the suicide bomber ants in Borneo, life-saver dogs in India, the ivory inlaid commode from the 1700s, a hawk that keeps pigeons away from Wimbledon, our very own sardine run, snakes (harmless) joining us on the table for lunch and endless monkey stories.
I hope we’ve also been able to learn more about our natural environment and maybe even have helped things in some small way.
But now a last peek From my Hide.
The whole idea of a hide is that you can sit quietly and unseen and observe nature at work. Our hide is not exactly in the jungle, but nature still provides us with endless entertainment.
Having said that, the other day my wife observed some extraordinary (at least we thought so) avian behaviour at our bird bath.
We feed the birds seed every morning and make sure the their bath is clean and full. This particular morning there was a male village weaver in full and gorgeous summer plumage on the bath, along with a smallish and possibly juvenile mossie (okay, if you insist, a house sparrow).
The weaver flew down to the seed on the ground, tried and tested some, and then, having selected a seed to its liking, and this is the interesting part, flew back to the bird bath with the seed in its mouth and fed it to the mossie, which was sitting there quivering as young mossies do when mother arrives with food.
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This happened two or three times when both birds were disturbed and flew off. Bear in mind, please, this was a sparrow youngster being fed by an adult weaver.
The cuckoos are notorious for parasitising other birds by laying their eggs in another bird’s nest so that the host bird brings up the cuckoo’s chicks as well as her own, but I wonder about weavers and sparrows.
So you see, it’s been fun. Until we meet again, cheers….
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