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| The Adventures of a Birder (Part 4) |
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| Written by Pauline Leinberger |
| Wednesday, 15 April 2009 19:44 |
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My very first “camp” with the NTOS, as our club was known in those days, was to Magoebaskloof. This was an area that had intrigued me for some time. I had heard of the Cherry Blossoms of Cheerio Halt but hadn’t realized what a wealth of history was to be found among the mountains between Tzaneen and Pietersburg. We camped in the house of the Lötter family who owned a pine plantation near Cheerio Halt and it was only in years to come that I learnt something of the adventurous and somewhat eccentric lives of the Thompson family who lived there. Awdrey Thompson was still living with her daughter Box when I met them. Box was a botanist who had started a nursery on the farm. She and her mother had collected cuttings of azaleas from all over South Africa. The uncommon yellow variety was grown from seed. The farm is a wonderland in October when the azaleas and the Japanese flowering cherries are in bloom. The gnarled old trees make drifts of pink and white surrounding the stone house where Mrs Thompson, then well over 80 and all but blind, lived. Awdrey’s husband, Louis, had been stationed as a medical officer in Messina and it was when he retired in 1945 that she, feeling the need to be alone for a while, took off on her famous hike, armed only with a penknife and a small rucksack. The intention was to walk from Messina along the Limpopo River to its confluence with the Levhuvu river, on the North east corner of the Kruger Park, where her daughter Tiny lived with her husband Harold Mockford. (The house we now know as part of Teba). She completed the walk in 10 days covering a distance of some 135km. This was only one of the many camping trips she and her family did in this wild and malaria ridden area. To return to birding, however, it becomes very clear looking at old photographs of the area how pine plantations have covered the montane grassland which was home to the lovely Blue Swallow (Blouswael) which arrives here to breed in spring and which now may be counted on the fingers of one hand in South Africa The patches of protected indigenous forest which still exist in this area are home to some very special and spectacular birds. Many of them are difficult to see as they are well camouflaged but have distinctive ringing calls. My first introduction to this was with Leon, the son of our host, who could copy many of these calls. His finest achievement, I thought, was his calling of the beautiful Knysna Lourie (Knysnaloerie) with its scarlet wings. It sounds like a collection of particularly amorous Bull frogs and Leon looked increasingly apoplectic as he made this sound. Leon also kept us captivated with his communication with a Chorister Robin (lawaaimakerjanfrederik), itself a great forest mimic, which will throw back at you whatever you give it. Forest birding is some of the most difficult but rewarding there. How difficult is the Emerald cuckoo to see but one can entertain oneself for many hours trying to get a direction on its “Pretty Georgy” call as with the soft hooting of the Narina Trogon. Oh I do believe forest birding is my very best.
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