Category Archives: Birds & Birding

Oklahoma Honeymoon

As I settled in the seat of the Delta Air plane en route to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico to look for waterbirds, I read in the abandoned newspaper that I’d scooped up, that the one thing I did NOT want to be doing was flying over Easter.

When is Easter? I asked the stewardess. ‘Tomorrow’ she chirped brightly.

Change of plan Aitch, I announced: We’re going to Oklahoma instead of the Gulf. I explained and showed her the newspaper and my reasons – airport congestion, overbooked flights – us on a cheap Delta 30-day pass.

Aitch sighed and agreed. Oka-ay. She’d been dreading going to Apache: ‘They’ll all know you and I won’t know anyone and I’ll feel left out and . . ‘

delta-small-plane

But now she had to face her fears. As soon as we landed at Dallas-Fort Worth we booked the next flight to Lawton Oklahoma, heading back north instead of carrying on south. There was just enough time if we scurried. Aitch decided she’d skip the loo and go once we were airborne. Mistake. It was a narrow little propeller plane like this, two seats a side, a narrow aisle, no hostess, no loo. Ooh!

We landed in Lawton after dark and she made it. We set off further north for Apache in a rental car. Apache: My hometown for a year as a Rotary exchange student in 1973. This was 1988. Arriving on the Patterson’s farm outside town we saw a ‘yuge’ SA flag waving from the flagpole! Jim had borrowed an oversize flag from the SA consulate in Houston to welcome us!

ApachePattersonRanch (11)
Apache Patterson Lunch (1)

Jim & Katie Patterson, the loveliest couple in the whole of the USA were just the same as ever!

They welcomed us with open arms to their beautiful and comfortable ranch house and it was as though we hadn’t been apart for fifteen years – during which time I had received exactly two letters from them. ‘Well, Peter’ said Jim with his crooked grin and twinkling eyes, ‘We didn’t want to flood you with correspondence.’

Apache Patterson Ranch_cr

One night as Jim and I settled down to watch a ballgame, Katie and Aitch decided BO-ORING! and left on a night drive in the Ford LTD looking for owls. Both girls were already suitably lubricated, plus they took extra stocks of their tipple. Knowing Katie, that was Bloody Marys. They had the windows down and were hooting weird owl calls and hosing themselves. When they returned they were laughing uncontrollably, leaning against each other for support. Jim and I looked up from the TV in bewilderment.

They had seen a possum snuffling around and Aitch was fascinated – she always LOVED the little night creatures. Katie followed it offroad into the fields, keeping it in the headlights. When it stopped she manoeuvred so it could best be seen and whispered to Aitch “Shall I kill it?” She was surprised at Aitch’s distraught look of horror: ‘No! No! Don’t kill it!’ Then she twigged: “No, no, not the possum! I meant the engine!”

They collapsed laughing when they both “saw it” and were still laughing helplessly when they got back home where Jim and I were shooting the breeze, drinking cold Coors and occasionally watching ‘the ballgame’ – Basketball I think; OU I think. Someone won, I think.

One morning I woke up to breakfast in bed. It was 1st April, my birthday – thirty three years young today – and Aitch delivered a tray of healthfood goodies. Mental health food, yum!

– Second birthday in Apache! – 33 – I had also turned 18 here –

Jim n Katie arranged a lovely barbecue poolside and invited my best mates from high school back in 1973. Jay Wood and Robbie Swanda had made the year unforgettable and here they were again, also with wives now; Robbie wearing the Optometry rugby jersey I had given him in 1984 when I visited after kayaking down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon.

Jay Wood & Robbie Swanda come for a barbecue; Robbie wears my Optometry rugby jersey (that I gave him in 1984, then regretted doing so! My only one!)
– Jay Wood & Robbie Swanda come for a barbecue – Robbie wears my Optometry rugby jersey, number 8 –
Jim unwraps the winter covers - Early for Aitch
– Jim unwraps the winter covers early for Aitch –

Jim even unwrapped their white Caddy Eldorado convertible from its winter covering earlier than usual and presented Aitch with the keys. She drove as far as the gate and then said ‘I think you must drive now Koos.’

– Koos! It’s too wide! – You drive! –

All I got was this old tractor that I had driven for Jim back in ’73. Life is so unfair.

Here's what I get to drive (memories of 1973)
– here’s what I get to drive (memories of 1973) –

OK, in fairness, he also gave me the keys to the beige Chevy Suburban you can see in the background with the door open. Which was so much fun I missed the Rotary meeting! Now THAT was embarrassing! Unforgivable! Everyone was forgiving / understanding (‘Well, you ARE on honeymoon, after all’), but that REALLY was a major gaffe! Damn! Fifteen years later and ten thousand miles away I have ONE meeting to remember and I forget it! *blush!!* We were out in the countryside looking for a Vermilion Flycatcher and I just clean forgot. We did see a lot of birds that day, but not this one:

Vermillion Flycatcher in flight by . .

Well, our five day trip to Apache stretched to a week. Wherever we went all I got was an elbow in the ribs as the local inhabitants shoved me aside and crowded around Aitch. Every now and then one would mutter over his shoulder at me: “Now you look after this gal, boy! Y’hear?” Aitch’s dread of going to “my” hometown had turned into a reluctance to leave “her” hometown!

After ten days I sat Aitch down and said “Now listen girl, we still have things to do, places to go and people to meet. We can’t stay in Apache forever!” She was having a ball, reveling in the attention and she and Katie were getting on like a house on fire. I suspect on all their jaunts when they would breeze off in the LTD saying, “Ya’ll stay home and watch the ballgame, y’hear?” that Katie was teaching her how to manage me and telling her how she managed Jim. Aitch obviously soaked up the lessons! It was Katie who had asked me as a seventeen year old back in 1973: “Peter, who do you think chooses the marriage partner?” Following my confident (wrong) answer she put me straight, telling me how, when Jim arrived for his first day of work at the bank in Oklahoma City she had turned to her friends and announced, “I’m going to marry that man!”

So it was very reluctantly that Aitch agreed that I could book for the next leg of our extended honeymoon.

~~oo0oo~~~

PS: I needed a haircut, so took myself off to Oscar and Sonia’s barber shop in town. I had dodged them back in 1973, letting my hair drop down onto my shoulders. Their son Dallas was in my second senior class.* Oscar and Sonia were full of beans and mischief and could ‘stir’ wickedly and hilariously.

I walked into the barber shop and said to the man while he slaved over some oke’s scalp – in my best Okie accent – ‘I have a complaint! I had my hair cut here in 1973 and I’ve never bin satisfied!’

He stopped snipping, stared at me over his specs for a good while; then his eyes widened and he said “Peedir!” Not bad, fifteen years later.

…

That I remembered. What I hadn’t remembered was a prank I played on Oscar back in 1973. Sister Sheila recently (2020) returned the letters I had written to my family back in South Africa way back then.

One letter told how Oscar had loaned me a projector to give a slide show and talk. I asked if he wanted it back the next day. ‘No,’ he said, ‘That’s too late.’ I said How’s midnight tonight? ‘No,’ he said, ‘That’s too soon. I’d prefer four in the mornin’.

We left it at that. I gave my talk. With me was my good Apache mate Robbie and fellow Rotary students Eve from Durban and Helen from Zim. We went back to Robbie’s house and jol’d. Then at 3.15am, we drove out to Oscar and Sonia’s farm outside town in Robbie’s Mustang. I knocked persistently and Oscar dragged himself to the door where I said, Hope I’m in time! I thought you might be wanting to show some home movies?

He blinked, gulped, then fell right in: ‘Yes, Yes,’ he says ‘I did. Come right in.’  He led us in shaking his head muttering ‘This Boy’s Alright, inne?’

He and Sonia then insisted we sit down and proceeded to show us way too many slides with total bullshit commentary: ‘This is a picture of Mars taken on our second trip there . . ‘ This (a picture of their farmyard, or of Dallas as a kid) was Paris, France on our third trip there . . . ‘

Robbie and I were hosing ourselves, Eve and Helen were falling asleep. Sonia then announced it was actually Oscars birthday, so we sang him HBD and left after 4am! Not often you catch Oscar and Sonia at their own game!

~~oo0oo~~

The thick old honeymoon photo album has been discarded in downsizing and selling our home, but not before recording all the photos. Here are the Oklahoman ones:

On, northwards, to Ohio to see Larry.

~~oo0oo~~

Recent Hella Hella History – Including a Wedding

My potted history of the two farms on opposite banks of the Umkomaas below the Hella Hella:
About fifty years ago when The Beatles were still The Quarrymen, a Pom family Wimbury hopped on to the mail ship in Pomerania to boldly go forth and do work in the colonies for the Great White Queen.
On board that ship was an 18yr old nubile South African on her way back from a gap year before they were called gap years, in Europe. Especially Italy where she learned some Italian, some Italian cooking, and did you know Lyn had a magnificent opera singing voice?
The Pom family and the Seffrican lass hit it off on board ship and soon the Wimbury family of England met the Payn family of Hella Hella on the banks of the mighty Mkomazi.
Hella Hella 2016 (5).jpg
– the Payn homestead at Hella Hella –

Meantime elsewhere a Jo’burg architect called Porter was making a good living and buying farms as a hobby. One of them became the Harold Porter Nature Reserve in Betty’s Bay. He sent his son Barry off to PMB varsity to get a BSc agric and then bought him a farm on the right bank of the Mkomazi opposite the Payns. This magnificent 5000 acre farm had the imposing Hella Hella mountain on it.

They called it Game Valley Estates and stocked it with nyala, impala, zebra, wildebeest and blesbok to add to the bushbuck, duiker, warthog, reedbuck and oribi that were there. That was the only time they ever stocked it. ca 1970.

Well, Barry had a Landrover cabriolet and wore short pants and long socks, and Lyn wore dresses so it was inevitable. They spotted each other across the mighty Mkomazi, their eyes locked and the two families were united in a river dynasty, solving the problem of parts of Barry’s farm being cut off from him and him having to traverse the Payn land to get to ‘Ottos.’

Hella Hella 2016 (15)
– ‘Otto’s’ homestead nowadays –

Except not really, as Barry and the Payn parents had quite a prickly relationship, kinda like porcupines meeting and sniffing but not embracing. So the farms were never united, Barry would grumble about how they didn’t appreciate the value of game fencing; when Mrs Payn put the farm up for sale and Barry could have negotiated they never got round to discussing a price and Trevor English bought it for a good price and Barry STILL had the prickly feeling of having to traverse someone else’s land to get to the other half of his farm! And English didn’t appreciate the value of game fencing.

Barry the bachelor stayed at Otto’s, so his and Lyn’s eyes actually probly locked while he drove his Landie across their lawn, not trans-river. Once they got wedlocked they moved up to Highover.

Barry & Lyn's old Highover homestead from 1974 (Warren was a 1yr old!)
– Barry & Lynne’s old Highover homestead from 1974 (Warren was a 1yr old!) –

Where they had a little porcupine – rescued when a Ford F150 did a caesarian section on its Mom at 65mph. It used to scurry around in the walls of their house between the corrugated iron and the rhino board inner walls. They also had Warren there. We bumped into him by chance visiting Hella Hella a couple years ago, and together we checked out the ruins of the house up on Highover where he was born forty years prior.

Later Barry and Lyn built a lovely new home at the foot of the Hella Hella, and the little Wimbury baby girl was growing shapelier and shapelier and she went nursing at Addington where the Weermag had sentenced a newly-knighted luitenant in the Medical Corps to hard labour: “You arre herreby sentenced to live in Doctorrs’ Quarrterrs and test eyeballs, including those of the 600 nurses ensconced in the Addington Nurses Res”.

What could I do? I obeyed. One of them was called Richenda Wimbury and she said you must come with me to a farm called Hella Hella. I took a peek at her legs and said OK. And so I met Lyn and Barry. It was 1980.

Me, Barry, McDuff, Richenda, Warren and Lynne at Hella Hella
– Me, Barry, McDuff, Richenda, Warren and Lynne at Hella Hella –

Later Richenda did audiology and moved to Wentworth hospital where she met a cardiovascular perfusionist called Trish Humphrey in 1985, arranged a Sunday braai and introduced her new friend to me and my friend Bernie the Jet. That was Aitch and the rest of that part of this tale was history.

Barry now had two young girlfriends, and this latest one would botanise with him! They would spend hours with their bums in the air and their noses in the grass. He wrote a love letter to his Botanising Buddy:

Dear Trish ,
In memory of past pleasant hours spent botanising on Game Valley ;  and in appreciation of your enthusiastic company and assistance on numerous trips up to Highover .
I hope you enjoy the CD ROM , it’s unfortunate that my scanner can’t scan 35mm slides , I have a far larger collection of slides and many are of better quality than the photos used in this presentation .
Just enjoy ! Some of the identifications may be a little off the mark so don’t let that worry you .
Love , Barry
Porters Hella Hella (1)
– Aitch – Beaming Barry – Richenda –

See here for more.

In 1988 Aitch and I got married at Hella Hella. We had been frequent guests and would continue to visit often for years to come. The farm meantime had been declared a Natural Heritage site. It was going to be the first marriage on the farm, but a Pee Aitch (professional hunter) and his chick got excited one night around the braai fire and suddenly got married. Technically, you could call theirs a shotgun marriage, right?

Here you can see their Natural Heritage Site plaque and certificate on the wall behind the bride-to-be:

. . and you make sure he knows who's . .
– Ma Iona teaching Aitch how to sort a husband out –

KCC mate Andre Hawarden made our wedding invites, complete with named rapids on the Dusi, Umgeni and Umko in case any guest wanted a quick paddle on the way!

Invite by Andre Hawarden (see how he has Duzi, Umngeni & Umko rapids named)
Hella Hella. Game Valley Estates. Lyn & Barry Porter our hosts
– that imposing Hella Hella behind us –

We started raising kids around 1998 and that led to less visits. Later Barry & Lyn sold the farm to a consortium who finally united the two Hella Hella farms into one logical unit, doing what I wished Barry could have done decades earlier. Of course it’s always easy with someone else’s money! Oscar Wilde said “Advice is wonderful stuff – in the giving.”

They bought a lovely unit in a complex in Umzumbe on the KZN South Coast, and Barry hit the trail, traveling far and wide on birding trips. Their son Warren was selling big trucks nearby; Barry’s brother’s Litchi Farm was close – outside Port Shepstone; McDuff, the younger son did heavy duty diving (oil rigs n stuff) all over the world; Lyn got busily involved in the local ‘Akward Society’ as we joked – orchids – and other affairs. Barry kept busy with birding, atlassing and other avian pursuits and committees. 

After Aitch’s first chemo in 2007 we went to Hella Hella for the first time since those days, staying in the lovely new cottages next to The Approaches. We woke up one morning and there was a big furry creature on Aitch’s pillow. It was her hair!

Then in 2011 Lyn died of breast cancer, Barry got a leg infection and died, and Aitch died – also breast cancer. February, April and July. Annus horribilis.

Recently a vulture hide in Oribi Gorge was unveiled: Barry would be delighted that it’s not just called “Barry’s Hide”. It’s called

The Barry Porter Memorial Vulture Viewing Hide.

You’ll understand why he would have loved the full formal title when I tell you he made us a tool to dig up plants. It had a handle like a motorbike, footsteps to step on to dig deep and the blade was made of the high-tensile steel of a cultivator blade. A Plant-Digger you might think? No. It had a neat label on it:

Porter’s Powerful Patented Plant-Pincher.

He also made us an intricate bird feeder labeled:

Barry’s Bizarre Balancing Bird Bistro. I found a photo with a bit of the bird bistro in the background behind Kiza Cele holding Jessie in the garden at 7 River Drive Westville. Note the dead branch for photography so you didn’t get artificial metal in your pic; the platform for seed; the various arms had spikes for oranges, cradles for bananas and pawpaws and small holders for suet and nuts. A full-buffet Barry bistro indeed!

River Dr Kiza Jess Bizarre Bird Bistro

 

~~~oo0oo~~~

Sand Forest

Sand Forest is a rare, very distinctive forest type with a unique combination of plant and animal species. As far as is known, this vegetation type is more or less restricted to ancient coastal dunes in northern KwaZulu-Natal and the extreme southern portion of Mozambique (together: Maputaland). Sand forest harbours many rare and unusual plant and animal species.

Sand Forest Lodge Collage2-001

Sand Forest Lodge just east of Hluhluwe village on the road to Sordwana Bay is a lovely spot. We spent two nights there this week, the kids each taking a friend along.

More:
Sand forests are thought to be relics of coastal dune forests, which have been separated from the ocean for more than a million years as the shoreline has shifted slowly eastwards over the millennia. Dunes have accreted on the southeast African coastal plain since the Pliocene (around 5 million to 2.5 million years before present) and frequent sand mobilization events during climatic changes have resulted in some reworking of the dunes. The geological history of the region suggests that the current ecosystems here may be of recent derivation and many endemic plant taxa comply with the concept of neo-endemics (recent locally evolved species), and biological evolution (notably speciation) is still in an active phase.

Sand forest harbours many rare and unusual plant and animal species, including several Maputaland Centre endemics. Because of its restricted occurrence and unusual species complement, sand forest is perhaps the most unique plant community in the Maputaland Centre. Of the 225 Maputaland Centre plant endemic species, 30 are associated with it and 20 restricted to it. In the case of birds, Neergaard’s sunbird is strongly associated with it.

Sand Forest Lodge Lungelo Jordi (1)

Plant species that characterise sand forest (licuati forest) are Drypetes arguta, Uvaria lucida subsp. virens, Cola greenwayi, Balanites maughamii, Psydrax fragrantissima, Hyperacanthus microphyllus, Dialium schlechteri, Pteleopsis myrtifolia, Ptaeroxylon obliquum, Croton pseudopulchellus and Newtonia hildebrandtii. The protruding crowns of many of the larger species are usually covered by epiphytes, such as the wiry orchid Microcoelia exilis and various lichens including Usnea spp. (Thanks wikipedia)

Sand Forest Spider big
Jumping spider on my shoe

And boys will be boys:

Sand Forest Boys GIF

~~oo0oo~~

Hwow! Hwange is Hwonderful!

One of Aitch’s list of ‘things to do’ once we knew she had cancer, was to visit her twin sis in Botswana. Janet quickly mustered her network and arranged a trip to Hwange, Zimbabwe’s wonderful big national park. We’d been once before – also with Janet. Her friends Beks and Sarah Ndlovu of African Bush Camps own a concession and run a very special camp at Somalisa in the south-eastern area called Linkwasha.

Beks calls it his Hemingway-style camp. We called it bliss. Unpretentious tents from the outside, luxury inside.

Hwange, Somalisa Camp
Hwange Cloudburst & Nightdrive (36)

The weather was amazing! Bright sunshine, then huge gathering clouds, then pouring rain and back to sunshine in a few hours. Repeated daily. Enough rain to bring out the bullfrogs – the first time I have seen them, not for lack of looking. They were out for their annual month of ribaldry: Bawdy songs, lewd & lascivious pixicephallic behaviour. Lie still honey, lemme love you! Also gluttony. Then hastily raise a bunch of different-looking kids, and it’s back underground for 11 months of regrets. I was a bit wild; I wonder if she’ll still respect me next season?

The rainstorms were spectacular!

We were dry under the Landcruiser canopy and enjoyed every minute of the downpour. Once, unbeknown to us, Janet at the back had water pouring down her neck and was getting freezing wet! She didn’t want to spoil the beauty and awesomeness so suffered in silence. When she told us back in camp we roared with sympathetic laughter as she turned the air blue with choice expletives!

After the rain there’s sunshine, and the bush telegraph page is wiped clean: New spoor becomes clearly evident. Aha! The lions and cubs passed this way!

There are cubs about . .

After a good soaking the animals would have to drip-dry. We could get under cover and have hot showers, hot drinks and warm dry clothing.

HwangeSomalisa2010 (sisters).JPG
– warm & dry ladies après le déluge –
HwangeSomalisa2010 (55)
sable bull gif
Three-banded Courser
Hwange Ground Hornbill

I think Hwange has become my favourite of all Africa’s big parks. It is simply fantastic.

Hwange Somalisa Camp

Those sand roads are very special, smooth and quiet; a breakfast spread on a termite mound out on Ngweshla or Kennedy pans is special too.

male lion looks back

Prologue – I had dashed off an email to Aitch in February 2009:

Hi Aitch – As ‘they’ so crudely put it, we need to ‘shit, or get off the pot’ as far as a decision to get to Okavango and to Beks Ndlovu’s camps this year. Either soonish (March), or September / October (very hot). We must decide yes or no, and if yes, who could we leave the kids with? Dilemma – K

–oo0oo–
So glad we stayed on the pot! The kids were fine; We got to Botswana eleven months after that email, in January 2010, then flew to Kasane, where Karen & Mike Bullock kindly hosted us; Then Janet trekked us on into Zimbabwe for Aitch’s last – great, unforgettable – Hwange trip.

We’d been before in 1997.

~~oo0oo~~

Luxury Birding

Thanda Zulu Bird Collage

Finally got round to making a collage of some of the birds we saw up in Zululand a few years back. Aitch and I went for a breakaway luxury weekend. It was dry – very dry – and the lodge had a water feature running right under the sundeck. Every bird from miles around (as well as all the animals) had to come here to drink.

It was perfect! Aitch was not so strong, so we chose to skip the game drives and ensconced ourselves comfortably on the deck, binocs, camera and telescopes handy. Tea or beer or coffee or gin would arrive at regular intervals. A casual wave would see them added to the bill. For dinner we walked ten metres back into the dining room! Breakfast was back on the deck.

Thanda Zulu lodge deck
– That deck from below –
Aitch at Thanda Zulu birding spot
– That Deck – Happy customer in her spot –

Map Thanda-001

Just past this popular bathing spot a waterfall plops into a pool where animals come to drink, And prance – like reindeer.

GIF of nyala does leaping

~~oo0oo~~

Back Story – True Confessions:

What are you doing for Trish on Friday? asked Feroza, my super-efficient practice manager.
Why? Am I working? I asked.
NO-O, it’s your 20th anniversary!
Oh.

It’s Wednesday already, so my mind starts racing. After 20 centuries it slows down and needs this kind of wake-up call. This jolt of OMG, I better not cock this up!

What is the last thing in the world that I would enjoy? I asked meself (gotta avoid the accusation of giving things for HER, when they’re actually for YOU)? It’s late notice and I’m working on Saturday, so I’m looking for a one-day something somewhere.

I know: The thought of lying around on my tummy in a spa for a few hours in daytime while someone slobbers oil on me sounds like what Beelzebub will probly sentence me to when I go to His Place, so I start looking for day spas and then I get the genius idea (or I spose really, the departure from the purely noble, selfless intentions): What about a spa in a game reserve where I can watch birds and other creatures while Aitch spas! Hmm . . .

Aha! A quick search turns up Thanda Zulu, 20km north of Hluhluwe.
That means just for the day is out, so I impose on Feroza (again) and I’m released from Saturday work. Now I’m booking a night in a game reserve. Um, with a spa. This doesn’t seem so hard anymore.

On the website I go to booking and click on online booking and payment. As the page disappears heading for the one that takes your credit card for melting, I catch sight of two things: R6100pppn and “phone direct for savings deals.”
So instead of committing online, I phone Johannesburg up in the hinterland and the BEAUTIFUL, gorgeous lady on the other end books me at R1950pppn. “Local special – You are South African, right?”. Rrrrraaait, I roll my RR’s and regret there aren’t any R’s in Swaaanepoel.

And so we ended up at a Zululand bushveld game reserve in the middle of a long drought with a water feature below a deck five paces from a pub. Aitch had in the meantime gleefully sold the kids to friends, getting in the spirit of adventure as she always did. So its double gin and tonics for me, erbil tea for her, while watching birds drinking and bathing in clear running shallow water on smooth rocks (OK, artificial rocks, but beautifully done) seated in a deckchair, binocs and camera in hand.

We skipped the game drive that evening in favour of lurking around the deck. Ditto the morning drive. Her spine couldn’t take the bumping. Our VW kombi was of course fine – smooth!

Aitch went off to her “treatments” (which I didn’t think she needed – ahem). And although she loved them, she hurried back whenever they were over and appropriated her camera back from my amateur and forgetful efforts). Because of the cancer, Meme the resident therapist, refused to do the massages Aitch had been looking forward to. “Can’t stir up the lymphatic circulation, darling!” she admonished, peering over her bright pink designer spectacles. So Aitch had more time at the waterhole than she would have – and loved it!

Our stay was a mere 24 hours, but it seemed longer and we saw, up-close and personal, 48 species of birds. In all my years of hanging out at waterholes I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a parade.

~~oo0oo~~

Early Morning Aerial Dogfight

Today’s the third morning I’ve watched an urgent, furious ruckus in my front garden in Westville, KwaZulu Natal. A bird screaming its head off while furiously chasing another like a fighter jet in hot pursuit. An aerial dogfight. So fast that I couldn’t get a good view as the target dashed in and out of the copse of trees and shrubs. I was facing into the sunrise which meant even when I got a half-decent glimpse it was of a silhouette with his beak open, screaming like a banshee. Interesting! Made me late for work!

I figured the pursuer was a Black-collared Barbet, and if so that would be a hole-nest parasite he’d be chasing – which would be a honeyguide. But I needed to see. Yesterday I got a good view of the pursuer: Red face and throat, stout beak. That was him alright.

Barbet_BlackCollared973pa

Today I got a glimpse of the suspect: White outer tail feathers. Most likely a Lesser or Scaly-throated Honeyguide. I’ll try to make sure, but I don’t think he’ll be sitting still in plain view anytime soon. I wonder if it’s the male, and while the barbet is doing his over-zealous patrol, his lady friend is plopping her egg in the hole nest?!

I do sympathise with the barbet, but I’m afraid I’m on team honeyguide – I hope they lay their egg in the barbet’s nest so a luta (the struggle) can continua!

Scaly-throated_Honeyguide_3

~~oo0oo~~

 

Lesser Honeyguide_001

scaly-throat and lesser (all internet pics)

~~oo0oo~~

Head-butting and Healing

Tom and I butted heads today. I decided to take time out and disappear for a quiet hour in a nature reserve. Just as I was about to leave Tom snuck into the back seat and lay down. On the way and the whole time there he slept.

I wandered around, staying near the bakkie, birding and snapping pics.

~~~oo0oo~~~

– roosfontein nature reserve in westville –

When we got home two hours later, he woke up and gave me a huge hug.

“Sorry Dad”.

“OK, thanks, m’boy. Sorry Tom”.

All is well with the world.

~~~oo0oo~~~

top pic from Amblers hiking club – thanks!

Zululand Adventure

Went on a magic trip this weekend. Sheila put a trip together led by her friend Don, ex-Melmoth farmer and great birder. The first part was to Melmoth itself – or more accurately nearby Ntonjoneni to friends and fellow farmers Gavon and Sandy. We traveled with another of Skiboat’s many friends, Simon, ex-SADF helicopter pilot, and commercial airline pilot.

Gavon & Sandy farm black wattle for its tannin and Nguni cattle for their marbled meat with its yellow fat (“It’s good for you! It’s grass-fed. White fat means it’s grain-fed”) and have game-fenced 1000ha of their land in the Emakhosini Valley – The Valley of the Kings – together with their neighbours into a beautiful reserve where they run giraffe, buffalo, wildebeasts, nyala, impala etc with their multi-coloured Ngunis (which I was surprised to hear they round up daily to count, and weekly to dip). Next door, Amafa (the official KZN heritage outfit) have bought farms – 12 at last count – and fenced them off to preserve them. We saw lots of game on that land. Also nearby is the 24 000ha Opathe reserve.

What a beautiful valley! Seven Zulu kings and one queen are buried in the valley and you can see – with much of Natal to choose from – why they chose it! There are monuments and museums and sites of interest. Dingaan’s kraal and the site where Piet Retief was killed are preserved and oft-visited by both Die Volk and aBantu. We heard tales of large gatherings, where I guess a whole lot of ‘stirring stuff’ gets spoken! The valley looking unbelievably lush and green and alive with birds. I’m hoping to get some pics from the others. All I have is lunch and some Ngunis. Sheila’s friend Mogs (Marguerite Poland) who wrote the book on the isiZulu names of the ngunis – The Abundant Herds – tells us these three are:

Nguni eMakhosini
– L-R: Intulo – lizard pattern; Amas’ezimpukane – flies in the buttermilk; Isomi – redwinged starling; – isiZulu names for nguni coat patterns by Sheila’s pal Mogs Oosthuizen (Dr Marguerite Poland) who wrote the book – see at end of post –

Gavon, Sandy, Don and Sally (Melmoth local) have been doing a twice-yearly bird-count in their area for the last 17yrs for UCT’s bird fellas, the ADU of the Fitztitute. This one’s called CAR for “co-ordinated avifaunal roadcount” – you drive your CAR and check for birds, stopping every 2km to scan. Same route on the same days every year: the last weekend in January and the last weekend in July.
We joined them for this one. Gavon had a new toy: An old white Landcruiser bakkie he has rigged out as an open game-viewing ‘shooting brake.’ The seven of us set out early morning with enough food and drink to have supplied the whole impi that moved through here en route to bliksem-ing the redcoat Poms at Isandlwana in 1879.

What a lovely day. Birding at its best, crisp weather, cool at first on the high hills till the mist burned off as we descended the valley. The count has been dropping over the 17 years. They told us how they used to see plenty storks (we saw none), herons (none), cranes (we saw four blue cranes), secretary birds (one) and raptors (jackal & steppe buzzards, tawny, longcrested, martial & wahlberg’s eagles, vultures, lanner & amur falcons).

Gavon (ca.60) and Don (ca.70) are old Melmoth farming buddies so the quips and insults flew fast and thick. Plenty of puns and lots of unhelpful advice, criticism and suggestions. (eg: – When Don was earnestly pointing out a willow warbler in a fever tree, Sandy leaned over and tried to straighten the crooked end of his finger; – Don’s croc-like sandals squeaked every step he walked, bringing the quip “Hark! What’s that sound! I think it’s a step buzzard!”).

Sunday we went to Dlinza and Ngoye forests. That’s another story.

~~oo0oo~~

Author: Poland, Marguerite and Hammond-Tooke, David; Illustrator: Leigh Voigt; Publisher: Fernwood Press

Minding Father

Tom is at Lungelo’s but he has to be at Kip McGrath extra maths at 8am so I call him and remind him to be at the gate at 7.15 sharp. Lungelo stays in the Westville Prison grounds.

He’s not that wide awake when I get there and protests at having to wake early AND do work IN THE HOLIDAYS! Do I understand the concept of “HOLIDAY”?
We’ll stop at Spar and get you something to drink and eat and you’ll be OK once we get there, my boy.
Well, I’m going to sleep straight afterwards and can I have a Monster energy drink please?
OK, fine.

Outside Kip he eats his smoked beef slices and sips his Monster. I watch a black-headed oriole and a golden-rumped tinker in the trees around us.
When its time to go in he says Please don’t let anyone finish my Monster. Put it in the fridge for me. (He’s going to walk home).
Take it with you and sip on it while working, I suggest.

No, he says, They’ll think you’re a bad Dad.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Mkhuze’s Great

Some things I love about Mkhuze:
Those dirt roads between the fever trees (there’s lotsa tar too, these days).
Few people.
Polite people even at a lion kill (‘After you! No, after YOU!’).
Lots of birds.

– Fever tree dirt track Mkhuze –

African time; African efficiency. We had electricity – at times, but not at our site, which I found out after I’d set up camp fully. Couldn’t test, as the generator only runs from 5pm to 10am – which is plenty, but you can’t find out if your site is working if you arrive when it’s not running. No problem, I set up a field kitchen 60m away from my site. We had water – at times. Even hot water at times. The bins had monkey- and baboon-proof lids – some of them.

FRIENDLY inefficient staff: Got any charcoal? Yes. Where? There. You’d looked there, but you go and look again: fokol. Go back. Doesn’t seem to be any. Yes, it is there. Where? I show you. None. HAU!! It was here! Screech of laughter: Hau! So she goes and fetches extra from the stores, hosing herself at the fact that ‘Strue’s Bob, there wasn’t any when she thought there was!

At the waterhole a sexy young thing with a 400mm lens got chatting away to this 59yr old. She musta been 19 in the shade. Burbling away about look at that and watch here for the pygmy kingfisher and have you seen the lions behind that bush and the poor wildebees calf lost its mother and the lions nearly ate it and etc. Fairly unusual for a Seffrican she was. My 17yr old can seldom string two words together to a stranger!

Very little ranger or staff presence so the ous were up and out on game drives well before the meant-to-be time of 5am.

Patrick the ranger on a game drive in his open top Landie stopped me – he recognised us from two previous visits when we went on drives and walks with him – and asked again, ‘Where’s the boy?’ Remarkable really, as the one visit was in May and the other in 2009! I spose we do stand out a bit. I told him Tom thought he’d rather be eaten by a lion than endure two teenage girls for six days.

Mkhuze very dry and huge tracts recently burnt.
The water hole was muddy and hugely popular. Everyone took turns to churn up the mud and poo n pee in it!
As thirsty as they were (they would come running up to it, keen to drink) they showed great reluctance to actually start drinking. But they had no choice.
This morning one of the wildebeests was lying dead next to the edge. Unmarked.
We speculated one of the rhinos had reprimanded it (they had “baleka’d” anything that came near to them as we watched them drink).

The only thing that baleka’d them was a male warthog. When a rhino said to him voetsack, he said No, YOU voetsack and made the rhino move over. Courage!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Note to self: There’s LOTS that needs fixing with your camping equipment!
I forgot the braai grid and couldn’t find one in six shops in Mkhuze village 18km away. I took the wrong gas bottle, didn’t fit. No problem, the girls got cold food* and hot tea – I had grabbed the electric kettle from the kitchen as I left home.

As always, the fridge worked a treat, so in the heat they got plenty of ice-cold drinks and water.

Next time I’m gonna be SO organised . . .
*Don’t feel sorry for them! They got some toasted sarmies from the Rhino Dino once or twice – and Phindile also made us one lekker breakfast.

~~~oo0oo~~~

fokol – none

Hau! – goodness gracious me

baleka – move away! fuckoff! language isiZulu

voetsack – pr: footsack; move away! fuckoff! language Afrikaans

Bliss

I heard a cry on high as I parked on the roof at work. Glancing up I saw two crows cartwheeling, freewheeling, locking claws and spiralling like a propellor high above me. What a magnificent display of flying excellence!
Buzzing around above and below them was a drongo, divebombing and harrassing them, cheeky little blighter. They ignored him and carried on exuberantly showing off. Wow!
Isn’t that amazing!? I said to my 74yr old carguard Bridget as she shuffled up asking “And now?“.
I pointed out the birds.
“Yes,” she says off-handedly, “Those two parents are teaching the young one to fly”.

It’s bliss, it is.
She has taught me about marine mammals too, young Bridget, my Scottish carguard: https://bewilderbeast.org/2018/10/15/bottleneck-bliss/.

The evening sky from my rooftop parking spot

Mkhuze Mantuma Camp

Jess and her two mates giggled away the weekend looking for big beasts. Elephants was what they were after, but they stayed in hiding. Eventually we were placing bets on seeing elephant poo! not even the whole animal! Still no luck. We saw lots of rhino and a a few buffalo instead. Plenty antelope and lots & lots of birds. Beautiful.

Evenings they watched movies while I read Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything (again!) and listened to the nightjar.

Mkhuze is very dry, so all the animals from miles around crowd the waterhole. Mudhole, really – very little water. Amazing that just a few miles away at Nsumo Pan there is miles of shoreline and clear blue water, but we saw very few animals there. Just hippos. Wisely croc-shy, maybe?

Dunno if it was this visit or another, but in walking around the camp I saw the bluest bird I’d ever seen – and it was a Black Cuckooshrike! I would have confidently asserted to you that Black Cuckooshrikes are black. Well, usually, but have a good look in bright sunlight:

– ’twas just like this – – the blue of the Black Cuckooshrike – from ethiobirds.smugmug.com – thanks –

Tom back in civilization had a ball too. His weekend was very different to ours: beach, shopping mall, KFC, two movies, a home in Durban North with dogs and pet pythons. Plus he was given three shad his host had caught. He brought them home, scaled them, filleted them and fried them with fresh-cut potato chips. Delicious! Quite the chef, my Tom!

~~~oo0oo~~~

Hluhluwe with a Seibert

Greg Seibert was an exchange student to Harrismith back in 1972. He mailed me in 2014 to say his brother Jeff was coming to SA for work in Port Elizabeth. He’s with General Motors. I said get him up to KZN and we can go to a game reserve. Short notice, so I booked Hluhluwe.

Hluhluwe JeffSeibert (88).JPG
Hluhluwe with Jeff-collage-1
– eles in the mist –

Greg thought he may join us but it didn’t happen. Very sadly.

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I wrote to friends after: Hared off at short notice to Hluhluwe-Mfolosi park.
Harrismith’s 1972 Rotary exchange student Greg Seibert contacted me to say his brother was in SA. He works for General Motors and I spose he was checking to see if they still sell Chevs in this neck of the woods. He’s from just outside Detroit, Michigan.

Mfolosi was dry and Hluhluwe was burnt, the logs still smouldering from a fire that burnt about half the park. Lots to see in the line of big grey animals plus antelope and painted dogs. Lots of birds, too.

Must get a kombi next time . .

~~oo0oo~~

Bufftail Bogey Bird . .

. . nailed at last!

On 2014/06/23 Crispin Hemson – Pigeon Valley Patriarch and Monarch – wrote:
Conditions in Pigeon Valley are very dry, giving great visibility into the undergrowth. We are suddenly seeing Buff-spotted Flufftails on the main track, or just next to it. Yesterday I saw two adults and a sub-adult. These are very unobtrusive birds, so do not expect rustling. I suspect that while in summer the undergrowth is dim and the main track bright, the Flufftails stay under cover. In winter the undergrowth is as bright as the area just outside it, so the pressure to stay there is less. Spotted Ground-Thrushes are also very visible, often just on the edge of the main track, digging into leaf litter that accumulates there. There are more than I originally thought – I saw them in four places up the track yesterday.

I wrote:

I have heard a thousand bufftails – particularly at Hella Hella where we weekend-ed monthly for ten to fifteen years, and on the Mkombaan river in Westville where we lived for fifteen years; and although I searched and stalked and lay in wait, and saw two dead ones – next-door-cat-got-it in River Drive, and flew-into-plate-glass at Hella Hella – a sighting has evaded me till now. One would hoot right outside my bedroom window, metres away, but I never caught a glimpse.

bufftail-dead
– I forget whose pic this is! –

Thanks to Pigeon Valley’s tireless champion, Crispin Hemson reporting on his birding regularly, I went on Sunday to Pigeon Valley and saw a spotted thrush at the entrance, and then that flufftail up at the fence line along King George V avenue. At last! Two seconds after forty years!

A male bird, who ducked into low dense thicket just outside the fence.

bufftail-pigeon-valley
– another of Crispin’s pics –

This was a big bogey bird as far as a sighting goes! Must be close to forty years of thinking “soon I’ll see one”.

Can a pitta in my garden be far behind?

~~~oo0oo~~~

Here’s a Sheryl Halstead Spotted Ground Thrush pic

Thrush, Spotted Ground (Sheryl Halstead)

~~~oo0oo~~~