Can you remember the way the pages smell? Poring over the birds illustrated on glossy vintage plates; wings posing, beaks and claws outstretched. Memorizing the names and hoping to catch a glimpse of one in real life, one day.
I can.
From My Grandmother’s Bird Book to Kruger: A Lifelong Love of Birdwatching
I spent hours paging through the huge bird book my grandmother had. The colourful feathers and curious names. Plum Coloured Starlings, Starred Robin, Paradise Flycatcher with its russet tail swooping to the bottom corner. She had sewn a cover for the book from material in a gaudy flower print, and I can still picture the leaves and petals and recall the texture of the fabric as I open the book… over and over… mapping where they lived, and how I could find them.
I drew birds, looked for birds on the telephone poles while on roadtrips, or scanned for them on seaside walks, but my birdwatching bug really caught when we moved to Nelspruit in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province.
On the doorstep of the Kruger National Park, the area sits at the foot of the escarpment. It’s hot, with crashing thunderstorms in summer, rushing rivers full of crocodiles and prolific birdlife. If you climb the mountains, there are pockets of intact rainforest, and on the top, wild grasslands in the highveld, home to birds not found in the valley below. Truly a trove for any feather-watching-fanatic, and I was one! Collecting bird sightings left, right and center.
And then I would tell my gran back in Cape Town, about this bird or that, and she would reminisce about seeing the same one years earlier. She would tell me the call. Oh! She could remember the songs of birds! The “Good lord, deliver us” of the night jars and “Hot pork piiiieeees” and “meitjie, meitjie”* of the elusive cuckoos that you could hear but never see!
My grandmother nurtured my interest in birds and I have encouraged the same in my son. It’s this curiosity that has made so many of our trips exciting, the bird chase is on! And it’s been a hobby that checked so many boxes for me, not only in the bird book. Taking long walks as a teenager, looking for birds was like catching Pokemon. Rather than sprawled in front of a tv (although I’m certain I did that too) I was drawing birds and getting outside. But the funny thing is, I don’t remember the tv shows… I do remember trekking down to the bottom of our garden, and the amazing bird discovery I made there.
We lived on a small holding, of about 22 hectares, just outside of town. Both a wonder and an isolation for a teenager. There was natural freedom, a small koppie climbed up the back perimeter, and my mom had painstakingly dammed the creek that ran down through the land, creating a wild pond. There were huge fig trees you could practically build a house in, that felt like secret dens under the canopies. Huge euphorbia trees with spiked branching arms housed a family of bushbabies. There were rocky outcrops of granite that felt hot and deserty, the odd Agama lizards sun bathing and then scuttling away with electric blue tails flashing behind them. There were grass fields, full of snakes (we stuck to the path) and indigenous fever trees, green trunks iconic and exotic. I might have sometimes missed out on hanging out with friends, but I was soon distracted by the birds!
And the birds! Well the birds were everywhere! I could spend hours with my binoculars following this bird and that, this call or that, ever hopeful that it would lead me to another tick in my bird book, the thrill of seeing a new bird drove me on… “Gotta catch em all” but the hours spent sitting on a rock by the stream, or in the branches of the fig were quiet and thoughtful too. Meditative. I learned to be patient, to move slowly, quietly. I learned to wait. To notice. To see. And not just the birds. The light, the leaves, the grass in the wind. The water running over the rocks in the river. And then, sudden movement, a flap of wings… what was that bird?
Imagine my thrill then, after walking down to the dam at the bottom of the property, pushing out the little boat and rowing around (thanks dad), careful not to get any bilharzia infested water droplets on my skin (thanks mom), drifting under the overhanging trees… the light filtering down, the water speckled in sparkles…. To look up and see a very large eye peering down at me!
I looked once and then twice, my mind furiously paging through my grandmother’s bird book, identifying beaks and colours and shapes and landing on: White-backed Night Heron. No mistaking it, it’s white-ringed eye blinked at me! I “whooped” silently on the inside! This was a new bird! A special bird! A Night Heron!
Guys, we didn’t have cellphones to take photos and I didn’t carry a camera. I had no proof, just another tick in my book. Back home, I found out that they are elusive residents (that means rare – epic Pokemon!) … and so I went back, and visited them again. The pair of herons had made their home on the large branches just above the water, hidden from view by the low hanging leaves. The perfect spot. Exactly where the book said they would be. They were secretive and no one except for me knew where they were.
A few days later in science class I happened to tell my science teacher, a fellow birder, that I had seen them, she was also very excited, although somewhat skeptical – Was I sure?
“Yes! I can show you!”
Nelspruit is quite a birding hotspot, and even has its own local chapter of the bird club, of which her husband was resident expert. She decided that they would come and check on my discovery and also being avian enthusiasts, get to see a pretty cool bird… if it was there!
And so an expedition got underway. Off we all trooped down the hill, through the snake grass, into the tiny boat (thanks dad), no bilharzia (yay!) and I paddled the bird experts to the tree and basked in the glory of birding VINDICATION when my birds were sitting right where I said they would be. My sighting was corroborated positively and then added to the official list for the entire area! As a 16 year old birder this was prize far beyond final exam marks!
Of course, this story has been on repeat for years in my family and my son happily informs others of my birding prowess, but it has also encouraged a strong fascination with birds in him. And that too is a prize! Now he points out birds and his eyes find the ones I didn’t see! Klaas cuckoo: hello! And no trip anywhere is boring, because we have birds! In the car there are continual shouts of – Hawk! Eagle! Kingfisher! On a safari trip he sat silently for almost an hour waiting for sandgrouse to come in to drink!
And then, full circle, on our almost last night in Kruger National Park on a recent trip, we took a night drive organized by the camp. All of us tucked up in a big safari truck, set off into the night. We didn’t see much. Sometimes it’s like that. The driver stopped and turned off all the lights and we looked at the stars, and listened to the frogs. It was a different kind of magic. Even for those hoping to spot a big cat. Huge African skies, filled with pin pricks of light. We sat quietly and felt big and small at the same time.
Eventually we turned back for home and in crossing the last bridge before camp, our guide stopped the vehicle for a last look down into the river. Shining the spotlights, criss cross the river, looking for movement and eyes. And there, stalking along the edge of an embankment! What did my kiddo see? A White-backed Night Heron! He spotted it! He identified it! He knew it was special! He got it!
For us it was like seeing a whole family of leopards under the bridge. And that’s why I love sharing birding with my family… because we have all learned that sometimes the little things that no one notices are the big things that you remember for years.
And in that sighting I was reminded of my grandmother, my science teacher, paddling on my dads boat, my moms dreams of cuckoos, and now I have a new memory, and my son has one too. And a tale to tell. And a curious hobby to pass on. Just ask him about Flufftails!**
I have a treasure in my home, a smaller Robert’s book, also covered in fabric and filled with my grannies notes. Where she had seen this bird and that. Little snippets of her birding life and little tendrils of her caught in her handwriting on the pages. And I still page through it, poring over the illustrations, the Paradise flycatcher’s tail, the flash of kingfisher blue. I think this treasure is why I happily fill bird books with notes, dates and times… capturing the memories of the birds but also a passage of time or an adventure. Writing in a bird book or a journal, or drawing the images in a sketchbook as I would often do, and being present and experiencing the little things is what adventure is all about. And sharing this habit of recording it with my family, and then reading it years later, even better?!
Now! Where’s that Finfoot hiding?!***
*Meitjie is the Afrikaans diminutive, meaning “little girl”.
**An African Finfoot is another elusive bird that we have on our family birding list, a much anticipated lifer.
***My son has had a sighting with a Flufftail that is a whole other story, we will save that for next time!
You can view the original artworks of birds for the Robert’s Bird book, they are on display in the Drostdy Hotel in Graaff Reinet (now named Robert Sobukwe Town)