I love summer! Sure the sunbeams, braais and skimpily clad bodies around the pool are good, but what really does it for me are the BIRDS! (the feathered variety not the bikini birds) Weird and wonderful birds pop up in the strangest place in summer.
In the last few weeks we’ve had a Pacific Golden Plover flitting into Den Staat wetlands near Mapungubwe National Park. This little guy should be hanging out along the coast of Indonesia, and the pacific islands this time of the year, not be swanning around in the Limpopo Province a few hundred miles from the sea. A Red Phalarope has also been seen paddling about on a water trough in the Kruger National park! They are normally found out to sea off the west African and South American coasts. This one obviously wanted to do a bit of game viewing!
When these rarities pop up, it causes great consternation in the birding world and results in frantically booked tickets, fuming spouses and traffic fines. Life is abandoned in the hope of seeing a rare little bird and ticking it off.
We birders are great ‘collectors’ and collect our birds by means of ‘ticks’ on our lists. We have list for every occasion – Life lists- the total number of birds you have ever laid your eyes on; then we have a Southern African lists – those birds seen with in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Southern Mozambique; which is then whittled down to South African lists, Year lists, Provincial lists, Trip lists, Wish lists…
Some of us go to the extreme, setting ourselves challenges, like birder Niall Perrins who decided to try and see 700 species in one year in Southern Africa. Amazingly enough he did it! It must have cost him a huge amount of money and time to travel to the far reaches of the region ticking as he went, but we twitchers secretly admire his achievement and hope that one day we can do the same.
Although non-birders can’t see the appeal of getting up at ‘sparrow’s fart’ and grovelling around in the undergrowth, birders actually make up the biggest percentage of eco-tourists in the world and birding is the fastest growing pastime in South Africa. Just a look at the bird book shelves in Exclusive Books will show you how popular it has become. Come on, join us! Together, we’ll take over the world!! Boo Haa Haa!
Keep looking up, you never know what you may see!
