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| The Adventures of a Birder (Part 3) |
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| Written by Pauline Leinberger |
| Wednesday, 15 April 2009 19:42 |
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Birding was not as fashionable a hobby in the 70s as it is today. Only yesterday I saw a piece about a South African birder who has seen 7000 species of birds. This is quite a frightening figure if you look at it in context. There are only 920 species in South Africa. In the 70s most of the active birders were pensioners which meant that they had time on their hands to indulge their interest. In addition to the regular weekly outings and long week end camps, we paid weekly visits to the Magaliesberg area at one time. Transvaal Nature Conservation was concerned with having the tops of the mountain declared a protected area, accordingly, they wanted a bird list and we were asked to help out. Most of the area is divided into narrow privately owned plots of land ending in common ground at the top of the mountain and the idea was to count the birds occurring in this area over a period of 2 years. There is no better way of learning than to count. You have to know what you are looking at before you can count it and this presented something of a challenge as many of the birds occurring on the grassy stony tops of the Magaliesberg are “little brown jobs” I think the farmers of the area were quite entertained by the groups of intrepid mature ladies who went trudging up the mountain armed with binoculars and the ever-present tea basket; occasionally accompanied by an equally mature gentleman. In good seasons the area is full of flowers and criss-crossed with clear little streams in which we cooled off deliciously in the summer months. One place was particularly interesting. At the top of the mountain was a fairly large pool – a perennial spring – where the Cape Vultures, residents in their colony on the Southern krantzes of the mountain regularly came to bath. I was astounded – a vulture bathing- stepping right into the water and splashing with great evidence of enjoyment in the sparkling clear water. It was with new respect I observed these ungainly creatures in the future. This project must have been successful as the top of the Magaliesberg is now a protected area. Major projects we were concerned with were, first the regional atlas of birds of the Transvaal and then later the national atlas of birds of Southern Africa. This took us to every remote corner of the Transvaal as it was then, and what a beautiful province it is. Many of us associate it with the wide skies and unchanging landscape of mealie lands, but the beauty of the Drakensberg in the east, the lush bush of the lowveld and the dry western bushveld with the green belt of the Limpopo thrown in for variety soon had me captivated. Of course each of these zones had its own population of birds. Who could forget the excitement of walking along the banks of that famed river (on the illegal side of course) and finding some white droppings under a tree, and looking up to find the large tawny form of a rare and elusive Pels Fishing Owl peering down at us, all to the accompaniment of the sounds of the African bush?
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