You need to kick back with Binocs, Beer, Telescope-on-a-Tripod and – lately – also a Camera to do your front porch birding justice. And I have just the chair for it on my porch – a Lazy Boy thingamiebob. Newish . .
Bought for me by my thoughtful, everloving wife when she realised I do a lot of sitting.
Now: An Argentine-African United Nations veterinarian writes a lovely blog he calls A Bush Snob Out Of Africa. In it he has a feature called Spot The Beast in which he shows a picture of a cryptic or camouflaged creature and invites you to find it. Then he zooms in to reveal an insect on bark, or a mantis, a leaf butterfly, or a moth, a frog, even a cheetah hidden in grass. I love it and I love spotting his ‘hidden’ beasts.
So now: Go back to the picture above and see if you can spot the hidden dragon or crouching dinosaur sharing my chair today. Only then scroll down:
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– a Striped Skink waits for flies to approach –
While I’m at it, I may as well mention some other lizards I have seen . .
A snake?
No, a Legless Skink, on the road in Hluhluwe Game Reserve
A snake?
No, A Grass Lizard – The Cavern, in the Drakensberg Spot three of his tiny legs
A snake? About the size of an earthworm . .
Yes, a Thread Snake at home in Westville. The sharp tip is his tail
Maybe Peters’ Thread Snake Leptotyphlops scutifrons – known to be found in the Durban area.
~~oo0oo~~
Here’s my best birding spot in full operational mode:
The punch bag keeps me in superb condition. Sometimes I even swat it a few times.
Just out of picture on the right: my fridge. It used to be in the kitchen. What good was that?
Mkhuze is dry. Very VERY dry! Nsumo Pan is empty. One little mud puddle has about twenty hippos huddling in it, caked in thick mud. Their farts probly don’t even bubble to the surface now.
At the entrance to KuMasinga hide, a chap with stunning new Swarovski binocs and a huge bazooka-like Canon telephoto lens asks, “You a birder?” Spotted my Zeiss binocs I suppose. In the next two minutes he’s told me the Swarovskis are R36 000, only Canon lenses “of course”, Mkhuze was last this dry in 1963 when he first visited, Swarovski gave him the binnies, he wouldn’t pay that much, and his name is Ian Sinclair.
“No shit?!” I said, “I’m a fan, I’ve got all your books”. “Got them here?” he asks, “I’ll sign ’em for you”. Faint Oirish accent. So he walks back to my bakkie with me and does just that in the only one I have with me.
“I’m writing another one. All of Africa’s birds. Photographic.” Where are you staying? I ask. We’re staying at Ghost Mountain Inn”. “Ah”, I said, “They’re licenced to sell beer and whisky.” He grins, “And I’m licenced to drink it! I’m Irish!”
In the hide, a bird party is sipping on the nectar of a profusion of red flowers. Fellow Irishman Tommy is photographing them with his bazooka. Ian is guiding him on his Africa trip. “What’s that tree again with those red flowers?” Ian asks of me. “Schotia” I say “Schotia brachypetala“. “Vernacular?” he asks. “Weeping Boer Bean”, I say, thinking he’s having me on. “Ah,” he says.
“I’m going to tell everyone who’ll listen that I told Ian Sinclair something he didn’t know,” I say. “Oh, I’ll deny it,” he says, quick as a flash.
Ian Sinclair! Well that was definitely the most interesting mammal I spotted on this trip. Read more about Ian here.
The feature pic shows that weeping boerbean tree at the waterhole. Ian said visit me if you come to Cape Town. I said I’ll bring whisky.
~~oo0oo~~
Enjoyable birding list:
White-backed vulture, yellow-breasted apalis, chin-spot batis, brubru, bulbul, sombre and yellow-bellied greenbul, golden-breasted bunting, orange-breasted bush shrike, camaroptera, yellow-fronted canary, long-billed crombec, pied crow, laughing, red-eyed, and cape turtle doves, emerald-spotted dove, FT drongo, blue-grey flycatcher, crested guineafowl, white helmet-shrike, African hoopoe, trumpeter, crowned and yellow-billed hornbills, YB kite, black-winged lapwing, red-faced mousebird, BH oriole, RB oxpecker, petronia, green pigeon, African pipit, 3-banded plover, puffback, fiscal shrike, bearded scrub robin, scimitarbill, grey-headed sparrow, cape glossy and black-bellied starlings, woolly-necked stork, white-bellied, scarlet-chested, purple-banded and grey sunbirds, wire-tailed swallow, blue waxbill, village and dark-backed weavers, cape white-eye.
Few animals: Tortoise, zebra, nyala, impala, waterbuck, kudu, warthog, giraffe, wildebeest, hippo, terrapin, slender mongoose, rock monitor lizard (Jess spotted these last two). Eleven big male nyala in one tight little herd.
~~oo0oo~~
Went with Jess and Jordi. Tom visited friends. We stayed in the safari tents. A yellow-bellied greenbul ate our crumbs right at my feet on the deck, and two thick-tailed nagapies (bushbaby / galago) raided our kitchen while we ate supper. Everything’s really hungry!
And a tiny little plant all alone in the dry dirt between the tents:
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!
