How fast can a birder move?

Not a question I have pondered too much in my life but having recently witnessed a hilarious event, it is worth a bit of consideration and sharing with you.

I have been moved by many birds in my life.  The thrill of being part of a group when each of you gets to take a very quick peek through the undergrowth at a lifer. In this case stealth and not speed is required. So maybe a few examples of birders moving in the undergrowth isn't going to answer this question. I have been moved by a rhino and a pride of lion while on foot in the Kruger National Park but as they aren't birding related, maybe we can save those embarrassing stories for another day. 

One of the events that stands out for me is the sighting of the Franklin's Gull at Centurion Lake during mid-August 2008. I recall hearing the news and immediately sending out an alert via e-mail to the BLNG members to make sure our members in Pretoria stood a chance of catching up with this rarity. These were the days before Facebook was around to spread this kind of message so e-mail and telephone was what we had. I was frustratingly stuck at the office in meetings at Sandton and just couldn't get away. About an hour after sharing the news, a 2 hour meeting was cancelled and I had a gap in my diary. Thankfully my hubby had a gap in his diary too (and we work at the same office) so a quick phone call later and we were on the road heading north. No binoculars but lots of energy. In my haste to get on the road, I forgot the directions at the office but we decided to wing it anyway. How big could the lake be anyway?

For someone seriously unfit, I can confirm that lake is huge. When you arrive at the mall side and realise after a while that you need to get to the office park side, brisk walking is required. Brisk walking in work clothes is not simple. Your high-heeled shoes are a serious inhibitor and floppy trousers get in the way of free movement, things you only notice when dashing around a rather large lake trying to find someone wearing binoculars. The crazy dash ended well with us spotting Lisl van Deventer and a pair of binoculars dangling around her neck. The event ended with "...they lived happily ever after" but no further mention will be made of the heavy breathing, panting and wheezing that got in the way of "hello", "thanks for showing us the bird", "glad we could borrow your binocs" and "cheers, we have to get back to the office now".

My latest example of a fast moving birder was just yesterday at Kgomo Kgomo.  Bets, Elouise and I decided there was only once choice of a birding venue on Boxing Day and after hearing news of the volume of water and the specials on display, we were away. Arriving just after 5:30am we were late. The Pretoria-based birders were able to get there quicker than us so were already enjoying their second coffees while we acclimatised ourselves. A swift check through Lisl's scope got us the Wooly-necked Stork and then the rush of greeting everyone and checking where to look for already-ticked species was on the cards. Rain was not our friend and soon we were all in our cars and driving up and down the roads in the area to work on our atlas cards, as playing in the rain wasn't too much fun.  By midday we met up with Lisl and Jerome at the bridge to catch up on events.  Lisl was kind enough to show us the area where we could sit and stake out the Lesser Moorhen. Strolling back to our vehicle and chairs, I happened to mention to Lisl our great sighting of a Dusky Lark a few hours earlier as it was a lifer for Elouise.

After a few seconds I realised I was talking to myself. Lisl had dashed back to Jerome and his bakkie and was muttering furiously. She turned around with eyes wide and pupils dilated. "Where, where, where?". By this stage, Jerome had started throwing their chairs and anything else lying around, into the back of the bakkie. After giving clear directions to Lisl, she lunged into the bakkie and was barely able to close the door before Jerome popped a u-turn and went careening into the village. From the time I muttered "Dusky Lark" to seeing them turn the corner only about 2 minutes must have passed. Elouise and Betsie were still getting our chairs out the back of the car when it was all over and the three of us stood alone on the bridge. Just us three, lots of water and hundreds of birds.

Not only did Lisl and Jerome physically move that fast but when we got a call a few minutes later to come and help join the search, we found another four cars filled with birders also looking for the lark. Either Lisl types smses really quickly or there's a technology grapevine at work that will just boggle the mind. Four other cars had literally appeared from nowhere in a few minutes and with the guys peeling out of those cars, the hunt was on. 

That's how fast birders can move if they need to. After a while we abandoned the search and went back to the bridge to quietly stalk the Lesser Moorhen. 45 minutes of quiet patience (most of it spent on a chair next to the road) paid off and we were rewarded with two sightings of this rare bird. By this time is was after 1pm and having been up since 2:30am, we sluggishly packed the chairs and scopes up. We lethargically climbed into the car to tackle the road back home. We took a slow drive down the Zaagkuildrift Road to maximise the atlasing time, before joining the craziness of the N1 back south.

Whether you're a fast mover or a slow shaker, there is place for everyone in the birding world.

Why birders are crazy

Us birders are a crazy bunch. We have odd habits and people who aren't birders don't understand us. We get up early. Really early. We drive to unheard of places that no-one other than birders have even heard about. We drive and walk through informal settlements with binoculars hanging around our necks as if we don't have a care in the world. We confer furiously with each other about some or other blob in the distance. We type into our smart phones or list birds on little black hardcover books that barely fit into our pockets. We nibble a lot and tend to eat unhealthy snacks, just to fill the holes in our tummies between ticks. We own a pair of gumboots and know how to use them. We own numerous tubes of sunblock and inevitably forget to use it. Our headgear smells of mouldy linen along with our Drimacs which are kept rolled up in a backpack or tossed onto the back seat of our cars. Most of us own a steel flask that is battered and bashed but still keeps coffee and hot water, hot. We consider rusks to be a food group. We know how to take care of ablutions in seconds on a busy road. If we don't already own a 4x4, we know another birder who has one and we abuse the relationship ruthlessly to get to those unheard of places. We check our smartphones regularly throughout the day for Facebook updates on the locality of some hard to find species. We count lifers. We have the entire southern part of Africa broken up into tiny little blocks and we even count the birds we see inside those little blocks. Technology has become part of our daily activities and we struggle to remember the old days and how we ever birded without it. The longer the camera lens, the deeper the pockets. We tolerate the uninitiated but not the boasters or the liars. Our employer never gives us enough vacation days in a year. We dream of jobs that would pay us enough to stay out in the field to do what we love, every day. We understand a 2 terabyte hard drive is the start of a collection, not enough to contain all the bird photographs we will ever take in our lifetime. We're frustrated birding in national parks as we can't get out of our cars and stalk something small and brown that just flew into the undergrowth. We only stop for animals long enough to look for an oxpecker with a yellow bill. Red Bull is our friend. We're always planning the next outing or negotiating with spouses for time away from them and the kids. We live for the next adventure. Love us and know you will always need to keep the car filled with petrol because we never know when the next rare bird alert might arrive in our inboxes.

Tinkerbell is a Boy

Tinkerbell is a boy!

When I first heard the reports of the Green Tinkerbird earlier this year, I was blown away that something so special could be rediscovered in our region after so many years. I had often stopped at the barbet page in my field guide, wondered about the bird and then paged on as it was one of those "yeah right, someone my grandmother's age went on a twitch and for some silly reason, the bird is still in the book". Now I realised Tinkerbell was real and I wanted to meet her. I knew Etienne Marais would make the perfect guide for this trip as he believes in fairies along with his newly discovered passion of low-carb eating...

On Thursday 10th of October, Elouise Kalmer, Sue Oertli and I set our alarm clocks for 3am. We had to get to Etienne's place and be ready to leave by 5am as we had a very long drive ahead of us all the way to Mozambique. Thanks to Elouise's hubby we arrived on time and in we soon had the bakkie packed, with the border at Komatipoort in our sights.

We were three odd passengers. Sue was looking for the Eurasian Bittern, Tinkerbell and as many photos of the local birds as possible. I had a long list with the top three being Racket-tailed Roller, Crab Plover and Tinkerbell. Elouise said she just needed to see everything in the book. Etienne looked mildly entertained when we discussed our lists while we waited at our fourth STOP/GO near the border, but made no comment.

I can go into the first few days of our trip in detail or I can mention numerous low-carbs discussions that took place in the car, over brekkie and during lunch along the road. Refusing to be intimidated, Elouise and I continued to each have two Provitas each for brekkie with our boiled egg and another two at lunchtime with our tuna. Sometimes we would even have another two with a piece of cheese. Dinner included rice or chips and a salad.  Mmmm. Sue was very quiet and refused to get drawn into any debates on the subject which was probably the wiser choice.

Day two we dipped on the Bittern and day three wasn't much better when the Olive-headed Weaver won a game of hide-and-seek after five hours. The only real winner was Elouise who continued to clock up the lifers one after the other. Her excitement kept us sane. The birding locations and our accommodation remained spectacular with the four happy travellers transitioning from birders to friends the more north we travelled.

Day four arrived and we were up at 3am ready to get to "Hugh's Coffee Spot" by dawn as that is when and where the fairies supposedly came out to play. There were many feathered distractions along the way and in-between searching, Elouise managed to clock up more lifers starting with the Red-throated Twinspot. We did not have a very lucky morning with regular stops, forays into the bush on tiny paths, calling, waiting, sighing and driving on. Thankfully we had the pleasure of atlasing while we spent hours on our search so we had much to do, see and record. We also took time to scare the local children (that was Etienne of course) who kept following us around and dashing off into the thick bush when we turned around to smile at them. Eventually it was Elouise and her camera that won them over when she took photos and spent 20 minutes showing them the results on her tiny screen.

We did not want to turn around and kept egging Etienne on for another kilometre and another.  Around 9am Etienne thought he heard an Alethe calling. This had the potential of being a huge find so far south so we decided to give it a go and put our fairy search on ice for a bit. We grabbed cameras and headed into the roadside forest in record time, scrambling over and under the vegetation before getting comfortable and keeping as still as possible while we quietly played the contact call. After 15 minutes of listening, calling and debating, we realised the contact call sounded suspiciously like that of the Green Malkoa so staying with the green theme, we called it up. Within seconds we had a response and got excellent views right above our heads with Elouise picking up another tick for her life list.

Dejectedly we left our spot in the thickets and moved back to the road. We were about three hours into our search by then. It was hot and we were tired. It was getting late. Suddenly Etienne froze. He looked at me and together we heard a "toot to to doo". We couldn't get to the mp3 quick enough to let him know we were nearby. We were standing peering into the trees above us when Sue asked innocently about the small bird in a tree behind us. Four pairs of binnies shot to four pairs of very greedy eyes.  There HE was! The sense of relief was incredible.

The speed at which Etienne got the scope out of the bakkie was phenomenal. He had the tripod standing upright in seconds and his right eye on the scope with his right hand furiously working on the focus wheel. Under a minute and all four of us had seen Realised through the scope. Team work at a time like this is critical especially when you have to negotiate tripod legs, deep sand and each other. We managed beautifully without even thinking about it. Sue and Elouise got clicking with their super lenses and I got my muk-en-druk up to the scope's eye piece to get my Tinkerbell shot. We enjoyed Tinkerbell for about 10 minutes before he flew off back to Neverland and the Lost Boys.

I think after those 10 minutes, I knew how Wendy felt on the very first night when Peter grabbed her hand near the open window and flew up into the night. Excitement, incredulity, shock and absolute delight. The grins on our faces seemed to last forever. Knowing we were a group of less than 50 local birders who had been able to tick this bird made us feel really special. All four of us look pleasure in selecting or writing down "Green Tinkerbird" on our atlas card. I have never had a thrill like that tick in my Lynx app when I made it and know I will glow in that for a while to come.

The rest of our trip was just as eventful with high's and low's (not just carbs) almost daily. We loved staying for two nights on the beach at Barra while we chased after Sand Plovers, Crab Plovers and Lesser Crested Terns. We changed our schedule to have a second go at the Olive-headed Weaver on the way home.  During the breakfast stop on our last birding day we eventually had enchanting views of a pair of weavers dancing in the canopy along with Neergaard's Sunbirds who skipped from tree to tree like excited 6-year olds full of sugar at ballet class for the first time.

Etienne could not have chosen a better venue for our last night just north of Xai-Xai. A sea view to die for, an indigenous coastal forest, a huge freshwater lake covered with White-back Ducks, delicious locally caught fish for dinner, ice cold 2M's, gorgeous chalets and the pleasure of counting 7 different pods of Humpback Whales from our chalet's deck.

You can do a trip like this on your own with friends but there is something personal about spending 7 days locked up with three other people in a vehicle where you emotionally move from being strangers or acquaintances to friends. After that time together we understood Etienne's passion for his new eating plan, the dreamy outcome for Sue when doubled up on her malaria tablets, Elouise's ability to nod off with her chin on her chest without making a sound and my ability to get carsick after just a few kilometres on a bumpy dirt road.

I can only thank Etienne for his never-give-up attitude and my companions for keeping me entertained for a super fabulous week. I came home with 11 lifers while Elouise beat all records with 52 new ticks. Sue got 1 lifer to tick but loads of photo lifers which ready made this trip worthwhile for her too. Etienne of course was the overall winner as he got to spend 7 days imprisoned up with the three nicest ladies on this side of the Jukskei.

Lucky packets for birders

Strange title for my blog today but it was a strange weekend. I've tried to make the most of the December holidays and get as much birding in as possible. As I type this almost three weeks after Christmas, my tree and decorations are still up. Not enough time for the small stuff I suppose.  This is a story of a great Saturday morning, great birds, great people and a great venue.

The regular Friday evening call with Elouise on 11th of January to discuss our birding activities for the weekend took place as scheduled. After a bit of debate, we decided to join up with the BLNG outing the next morning at Buffelsdrift. Elouise would be at my place by 5am and we would charge north up the N1 to get to Rob and Co by 6am. It does take a lot of dedication to bird with BLNG as most of the outings are north of Pretoria and that means getting up an extra hour earlier than everyone else to travel through from Joburg. Birders must however go where the party is and the party was at Buffelsdrift.

We arrive slightly after 6am at Rob's place and it is packed with people. Rob's place is famous and so is Rob. Any opportunity to bird with Rob is usually seized with both hands and this time the outing numbers weren't limited. It was going to be a whopper of a walk. The ringers were also there under the trees and they had already drained their flasks after being up from 3am. There were about 15 ringers furiously busy with almost 30 birders milling about. Rob's place truly is popular.

No sooner had we exited the bakkie and joined the group when one of the ringers came bounding up to us with a couple of small bags dangling from a hook on his waistcoat. "Wait till you see when I've got" Johan grins broadly, in Afrikaans actually. First bag unhooked and a careful hand dips in.  Its like a lucky packet, but especially for birders. All thirty of us crowd a little closer.  Johan's hand comes out and a bedraggled, feathered ball emerges.  Legs are secured and for the first time we get to gaze upon the beauty that is.. unknown... A quick stretch, a shake of the feathers and a small warbler is revealed. That's where the recognition stops for me. The chattering starts among the birders, each wondering what it could be and shooting questions at Johan and Rob who quietly smiled at us. Grrrr. Finally Johan took pity on us and introduced us to a Garden Warbler.

What? A Garden Warbler? But that's a lifer for me. Before I've even had time to shake out own my feathers, I am looking at one of my bogey birds. This warbler has defied me by staying silent and hidden during my warbler-hunting expeditions. Here he is calmly perched in Johan's not-so-delicate fingers. Johan takes us through the key identification points. Rob nods encouragingly while we all look on in wonder. This is not just a lifer for me but a lifer for many. Cameras click furiously and everyone seems to talk wildly at the same time. Books are produced, carefully referenced and notes made. What a start to the outing.

But wait there's more. Another bag, another Cracker Jack surprise.  This time the second warbler got a calmer reception. Tiny and buffy, not white. The difficulty of identifying a bird in the hand, away from his habitat, not calling and not displaying normal behaviour, is hard to describe. Of course the ringers can do it better than everyone and they have the best reference material available. A new debate had kicked off. In one corner the Marsh Warbler group. The other corner was taken up by a few who took a chance on a Eurasian Reed Warbler. It was a lonely corner (check the distribution map of the EMW if you aren't sure why). Apart from feather counting, primaries measured and the inside of the bill's colour viewed a most interesting diagnostic feature was revealed. Something none of us had considered. Something you never get to experience in the field. Something only the secret ringing society would know to look for. Turn the bird over and check out the colour under his toes. Huh?  

Yep, Johan flips the bird over and fairly bright yellow toes are reveled. It is startling how yellow the yellow actually is. It looks as if our Marsh Warbler has been flitting from flower to flower like a bee, picking up bright yellow pollen along the way. What a thrill to experience something so special. Its something I will never forget and just to make sure, it's marked in my field guide now.  

 We have to get on with the outing and eventually split up into two groups. Elouise and I choose the Afrikaans group and turn right out of Rob's driveway, while most of the group go left with Rob. What a great walk. For those of us atlasing, we type and write furiously as bird after bird reveal themselves through displays, calls and fly-bys. We got down to the end of the pentad where the road narrowed. We stopped to try and get a better view of a kingfisher that had shot past us. We were all looking right and Elouise looked left. She saw something big but very shy as it was hiding away in the depths of an acacia. It took all ten of us to peer at it from all angles before a beautiful Great Spotted Cuckoo was revealed. What a great addition to the pentad. What a great addition to a few people's life lists too.

 We continued down the road and turned off for a lovely walk along the canal. There really are many special places in Buffelsdrift. They also have the friendliest mountain bikers all of whom greeted us in passing and some even stopping to ask about the birds we'd seen. We had great views of White-throated Swallows whizzing past just a metre or so from our faces. They really are special birds as we are able to see them up close. Walking along we found a bit of water in a small quarry. Looking across the water, we spotted mist nets belonging to the ringers. Carefully crossing the water and avoiding a couple of birds already trapped in the net, we walked along the path back towards Rob's house. My phone rang and Rod told me to get the group back to the house as soon as possible.The ringers had netted a River Warbler. Yes, you read correctly, a River Warbler.

If you know anything about a River Warbler, it is one of the most sought-after birds in the region. Finding one and then actually spotting it long enough for an id is virtually impossible for your average birder. It is extra secretive and skulks only in the thickest of tickets. Probably one of the rarest birds for me and definitely one glaringly lacking off my life list. I quickly turned around, shouted the good news to everyone and we were off. We carefully followed the path and the nets to the promised land where all the ringers were camped out. We feverishly looked for Rob and saw him along with the rest of the group, all crowded at Chris's table. We dashed to join the huddle.

It was time for Cracker Jack prize number two for the day.  Finally glad we'd arrived, Chris reached into his lucky packet. Out came this perfect specimen of a River Warbler. Size and shape of the head were perfectly described in the field guides. Chris turned around with the bird and we got a glimpse of the breast. I had never seen more beautiful streaking on a breast before. He proudly held his head skyward for us all to admire those streaks. Cameras were on overdrive as he posed for us, as if he knew what we were appreciating.

The excitement of the morning died down almost suddenly while everyone took in the prize. Smaller groups of birders mingled over a field guide or two while others checked out the photos they had shot off. I couldn't wait to get my smudgy cellphone photo onto the BLNG Facebook page to let everyone know what we had seen. The group split up. Some looked for breakfast, some went for another walk, others got their chairs and sat pensively in the shade of the ringing trees. There was a delightful calmness about the group.

Thinking back now on the outing it really is one of the best outings I have ever been on with the club. The group might have been big but they made up for it with their enthusiasm. We had a great mix of brand new and experienced birders which helped to keep everyone's spirits up. One thing about our club that I absolutely love is the interaction and friendliness between everyone whether it be on an outing, a camp or even an evening meeting. This day typified that for me with the relaxed atmosphere of Rob's place, the interaction between the A ringers and their learners and of course all of us.  A huge thanks must go to Rob and Gerrie for a great day.  Something I will also have to remember is the next time I pass a Marsh Warbler, I'll be sure to ask it to wave.