I have seen many LBJs in my life, but I've never heard one singing “Sex twice weekly. Sex twice weekly. Sex twice weekly...".
That's a Cape bulbul, says Tim Carr. A perfect example of a little brown job (LBJ). Listen. We crane our necks, look this way and that, see nothing. And whatever sound we are actually hearing is lost in translation. We laugh. It's not quite a bird that sings its name, like the Cape turtle dove (“work HAR-der, work HAR-der” — the kind of bird I appreciate), but it's a good way to draw in a group of media people and perhaps turn some of us into birders. Hearing — and interpreting — that peculiar call is now on my wish list (more about lists later).
We're on a dawn walk at Rondevlei, one of a series of estuarine lakes that form part of the Wilderness section of the Garden Route National Park. One of the biggest conservation projects in the area, Reflections Eco-Reserve belongs to Carr and his wife Angelique, who have restored 42ha of land by removing degraded pine and planting thousands of indigenous trees. The rejuvenation process has taken years but they can now count at least 140 bird species on the property, as well as many animals, including water mongoose, caracal, Cape clawless otter and grey duiker.
Reflections is a good place to start understanding what it means to be eco-friendly, off-grid and sustainable at the same time. They are also involved with the Garden Route and Klein Karoo (GR&KK) initiative, which includes training birding guides to service the growing avitourism market.
The bulbul flies over: “Sex twice weekly. Sex twice weekly...”
While a blissful look passes over Carr's face, most of us newbies still can't hear it. But I think we've started listening.
BIRD TALK
The first twitchers I encountered, way back in the 1990s, probably had “warbler neck” (sore from spending too much time looking up) searching for something special in the Vumba Botanical Garden and Reserve in eastern Zimbabwe, near the border with Mozambique.
The two elderly couples — fitting the stereotype — were so excited about their sighting that they insisted we look through their binoculars to see if we could see it too. After an age of seeing nothing, I pretended I'd seen a movement in the forest canopy just to please them. The experience didn't turn me on to birding, but it made me happy that strangers wanted to share something that was special to them. The birding tribe, I now understand, is a thing.
I used to be a birdwatcher but I'm moving on: I'm going to be a birder. I'd like to be a lister, perhaps even a twitcher* (see "Know Your Bird Lovers" below).
In fact, I was that lazy birdwatcher who didn't want to work to identify my feathered friends. I didn't want to panic about memorising some beak shape or tail colour and then rush to the bird book to find it. I was happy to lie on the lawn and look up at the sky or into the trees and wait for someone else to say... there's a hadeda! There are many UFOs in my past.
HIDE & SEEK
I love the idea of a bird hide; it's cool and almost dark; it's quiet, often silent. There's something faintly religious about them. The first one we visit is in the Garden Route Botanical Garden, where curator Christiaan Viljoen is possibly the most enthusiastic proponent of avitourism you could hope to meet. He even named his daughter after the beautiful Narina trogon.
On a rambling walk through wetland, rehabilitated forest and aloe and protea gardens, I start to see the point of it all: create safe places where people can be in nature; train guides for walking and birding trails; educate people about the beauty that surrounds them. Invite the community in. We sit in the garden's newly refurbished hide and it's simply blissful.
Andrew de Blocq, the avitourism manager of BirdLife South Africa, our host and birding supremo, quietly adds the ticks to our communal “what's been seen” list, including a forest buzzard and an African goshawk.
Birding, it seems, is the opposite of navel gazing but it can be meditative.
I experience this peacefulness again at Kwendalo, a holistic wellness farm just outside Plett where, in collaboration with BirdLife Plettenberg Bay, a hide has been built as part of their birding and outreach projects. The centre is a certified avitourism accommodation provider with dedicated birding trails and a focus on community, education and wellbeing.
Matthew Zylstra, Kwendalo's conservation ecologist, believes birdwatching is a gateway to mindfulness, social connection and improved mental health, and, judging by the smile as wide as the sky on his face, I think he might be right. By the time we've eaten our lunch under the trees at the centre's Green Cafe, I'm convinced a few days there would definitely widen my own smile — and I'd have ticked off a whole lot of new birds on my list, including the white-backed duck (sought after as it is rare and secretive) and the red-knobbed coot (a name that can lead to sniggers and giggles).
WHAT MAKES THEM TICK?
We're in our third hide, protected from a light lovely drizzle, when the term “Patagonia picnic table effect” emerges (Spoiler alert: it's not that Patagonia). Woodbourne Pan salt marsh is on the eastern side of the Knysna estuary and a couple of expert twitchers are regaling us with tales of the tribe — who saw which bird where and whether they shared — and it's fascinating.
The story goes that someone was sitting at a picnic table on Arizona State Route 82 in the US, south of the town of Patagonia, when they saw a rare bird. They shared this sighting, which led to an influx of birdwatchers to the site, resulting in the discovery of more rare birds there. I can't help but want to be part of this wonderfully odd community. While we talk and joke, De Blocq adds the ticks to our steadily growing list. These include the black-winged stilt (longest legs-to-body ratio of any bird) and the African spoonbill.
FOREST, RIVER, BEACH
If you've ever wondered what to give the person in your life who might have everything, a pair of binoculars and guided birding trip is one suggestion. The Garden Route offers many blissful settings in which to see birds and, on our packed avitourism trip, we visit the Garden of Eden in Knysna; indulge in an eco boat cruise on the Touw River; and take a walk on the beach at Nature's Valley to watch the oystercatchers skittering on the dunes.
Chris Patton has worked for years to improve universal access at SANParks facilities. We meet him on the Garden of Eden's wheelchair-friendly boardwalk and take a slow roll/stroll through the forest, listening and looking. He encourages us to be so still that the tiniest movement of a bird in the high trees can be discerned. This stillness brings rewards — and we catch a glimpse, however brief, of the glorious Knysna turaco's shining red feathers as it glides through the treetops. Some of the more attentive among us may have been lucky enough to spot the tiny collared sunbird, one of seven sunbirds on the Garden Route.
On a perfect blue-sky day we take the Wilderness River Safaris ferry onto the water and see two purple herons in the reeds. A giant kingfisher puts on a display in the trees. There are wetlands, a lagoon and forests and the bird life is prolific. The word “blissful” keeps coming up. There's nothing like being on calm waters with a soft purring engine and a bird person showing the way.
I'm humming some favourite Leonard Cohen lyrics: “Thought I saw an eagle, but it might have been a vulture”... I now have many favourite birds. And one of them is the African (black) oystercatcher, which the people from Nature's Valley Trust have helped remove from the endangered list through public awareness campaigns and a ban on beach driving. The white-fronted plover is also a subject of their beach conservation project. I see De Blocq making his marks. Tick. Tick.
GOLIATH FLIES!
Before we leave the Garden Route and fly up and over the winding passes through to the Klein Karoo, where there are new and different birds to discover (see part 2 next week), we have our most exciting sighting yet.
Across the road from Sedgefield's In Toto Retreat, where we are treated to a breakfast worthy of Michelin stars, we see a pair of goliath heron chicks preparing to leave their nest. A crowd of enthusiasts has gathered, and I'm guessing this must be something of a Patagonia-picnic-table-effect event, despite its being the only known nest in the Western Cape. The goliath is the largest heron in the world and from down on the ground the chicks look enormous (I think they look like orangutangs with wings, probably due to the bright orange feathers on their neck and head). There's a lot of cooing and cawing from the spectators as the first chick steps off the edge...
BACK TO EARTH
By the end of the trip, we'd seen 30 of South Africa's 69 endemic birds, “a great showcase of the area's diversity and collection of special 'proudly South African' species”, says De Blocq, who has ticked off plus-minus 160 birds. At this point we're roughly half way and we have places to go and penguins to see.
Everybody loves a penguin (note the number of animated movies with them in lead roles) and we're lucky to have a meet and greet with the five African penguins currently in the care of the Tenikwa Wildlife Awareness Centre at The Crags. All have script-worthy stories. Most don't start nicely, but hopefully they will have happy endings.
In the romance genre, there's Backman (injured by a boat propeller) and Happy Feet (found with fishing line around her beak and face), who have become a breeding pair and, as mates for life, will be released together. Then there's Cafe au Lait and Maya, who couldn't find enough fish to eat and didn't have the fat reserves to moult, and Flipper, who was handed in with a broken flipper and severe dehydration. After enormous effort, caretakers Keri and Alex McMorran are hopeful their precious charges will waddle down the red carpet back to the ocean and swim off into the sunset.
For us, it's time for another kind of sunset as our time on the Garden Route comes to an end. For the next chapter, we are heading into the Klein Karoo. As we move on, we see our national bird, the blue crane, on the Bitou river floodplain. It seems symbolic, a good omen for the next adventure.
• Read part two on our website or in the Sunday Times print edition on April 21. Scop was hosted by BirdLife South Africa. See birdlife.co.za; gobirding.co.za
KNOW YOUR BIRD LOVERS
- Bird-watcher: Any person who watches a bird. Interest does not usually extend past pleasantly contemplating the bird and its natural context.
- Birder: A person with a developed interest in birds; can range from learning bird identification to going on outings to look for birds to a full-blown obsessive international lister.
- Lister: Anyone who keeps a list of the birds they have seen, whether in their garden, city, province, country, region or the world.
- Twitcher: A person who travels (on a “twitch”) with the express purpose of seeing rare birds found by others; a passionate lister who is invested in ticking off new birds.
