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.
