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February 21
As I was saying before
being so rudely interrupted by electricians, painters and builders on
January 31. . . it was Full Moon that night for the second time in a
single month - and tonight is full moon again. This seems to be
shaping up into a brief, monthly diary.
In the passing of one
moon Arlene's house-pets
have grown into dogs. Candy, the bi-i-g dog, standing one and a
half-hands tall, (about one foot) has learned to chase after a stick
and never bring it back. It is the most exciting thing in her life.
She even managed once to to jump high enough to tear my shirt, and
she constantly leaps at full stretch to nip my thigh at the mere
possibility of a stick being thrown if one can be found. Her second
most heart-stopping experience is to chase a francolin to the edge of
the cliff. On the beach she has twice been caught by a fast, sliding
curtain of surf, and it annoys her exceedingly. Susie, standing all
of one hand high (just over half a foot tall) if you discount the
flying fur, wants to bite a dassie twice her size (though she is in
terror of dogs, even if they are chihuahuas). She squeezed into a
crack in the rock the other day, so far that only her sprawled-flat
hindlegs were faintly visible. She and the dassie crouching within
made an awful racket.
Down at Serenity the
other day the dogs were fascinated, as I was, by a cormorant fishing
in the pool, oblivious of our presence. It chased some little fish
up a long finger of water between the rocks, half running and half
swimming with its head at fish level. The bird popped out right next
to where we were sitting on the rock, and it and the dogs took off in
different directions. I spent hours watching a juvenile kelp gull
learning to feed itself on the rocks in the Kwaaiwater inlet while
its parents, far smaller than their offspring, watched indulgently.
The grey and speckled chick was huge, and I realised that I was
looking at something which, when I first arrived, I speculated might
be a sooty albatross! The juveniles seem to glide above our heads on
the cliff more slowly and elegantly than their parents.
I mentioned earlier, I
think, that each day along the cliff seems to belong to a different
bird species. Most memorable was oystercatcher day. A stranger
passing me near Grotto Beach muttered, "I've
never seen so many oystercatchers! They're
everywhere." I was busy
counting them as they stood, most untypically, in lines on the flat
open beach. Next day, and ever since, I've
noticed only one or two couples over a five kilometre stretch. There
have been Lesser Striped Swallow days, when the skies and the
pathside rain puddles were filled with them; and Karoo Prinia days
when they chirp from every bush. And those Cape Robin days. . .
Arlene and I drove to
Caledon about a fortnight ago to register as voters. It took most of
a day as the departmental computer or printer was down. On the way,
where the Bot River lagoon begins, we saw two fine Fish Eagles
standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a branch above the water . . . and
on the open grassland nearby, two Blue Cranes.
Arlene is still trying
to come to terms with "living
in the bush" (sic). She
says she still has major reservations about this place, though not
about the house. Strangely, she was utterly calm the other evening
when she came downstairs and announced, "I
think I've just killed a
scorpion - it has big claws, and when I chased it, it curled up its
tail. Sure enough, I found on the marble step (upstairs!) leading
to our bedroom, a very dead scorpion. "Quite
harmless", I pronounced.
I didn't tell her about
the nest of spiders John and I killed while clearing the undergrowth
under the giant protea. A big momma. That information can wait a
year. A big-hairy spider encounter occurred in Johannesburg when we
moved into our Parktown North home. . . and Arlene had wanted to
sell it immediately.
Standing on the balcony
the other evening, we watched an indescribably beautiful sunset. No
strident, dramatic colours, just a vast wash of pink sea and sky in
the west, merging into dove-grey panoramas to the east, where the
mist floated across the mouth of the lagoon. Arlene went inside
because the bats came out to flit all around us in the gloaming. A
calm sea had turned into a crashing cauldron.
My picture from the
cliff this morning is just this: Serried ranks of massive waves
approaching from the south-west. A green-red-blue Collared Sunbird
poised above a protea bush on the cliff-edge. The bird, suspended
against a blue sky, is suddenly etched against a wall of white. . .
as a seventh wave thuds against the rock-wall and throws itself
three; four; five stories into the air above the cliff. The
sparkling foam seems about to engulf the hovering bird, but in
reality the water is nearly 50 metres away.
Now I must go and study
some of those waves which I see rising between the balustrades of
the balcony as I write.
9th March
Sunday the seventh of
March was a bee-yewtful day. The air fizzed like champagne, but
everything else on the tip of Africa was calm and still. Except for
me, and a dozen other people with dogs on the cliff path. I was
quietly observing a couple of tiny plants when a party came round the
bush with three big mastiffs. Susie leapt out of her collar and
lead, and took off eastwards in sheer terror. I had to chase her
for about half a mile; then bring both dogs back to the house, then I had to retrace my steps for two kilometres
in search of a dog's
lead which I had lost.
At last Arlene and I
were able to set off on a picnic, with Nick's
outdoor easy-chairs, umbrella and champagne (which turned out to be
so sweet I actually threw the last half-glassful away!)
But nothing could spoil
the sparkling, still day as we travelled round Walker Bay in search
of Danger Point lighthouse which has beckoned us ever since we
arrived here.
While picnicking beside
a little harbour (Franskraal) beyond Danger Point we watched a
yellowfooted Little Egret fishing in a pool. Then some gulls
gargling salt water. And then. . . a Whimbrel! It's
long upturned beak and chocolate-striped head showing diagnostically
on a rock about 20 paces from us. We had plenty of time to ensure it
was a Whimbrel and not a Curlew.
We watched fishermen,
shark-hunters and pleasure boats creeping through the rocky channel
into the tiny harbour. We studied the outline of Dyer's
Island - long, flat, inhospitable with huge white surf breaking
along its shore - and along the partly-submerged reef which
stretched over a distance longer than the island. The boats
carrying cages for underwater viewing of Great White Sharks came
from the direction of the reef.
We followed a sandy
track along the edge of of the ithmus, in the direction of the
lighthouse, until my 4x4 Jeep, having negotiated large lunging rocks
and grabbing bushes, scrabbled to a halt on a twisting corner of
seasand. Arlene panicked, just because I hadn't
taken the trouble to learn how to put the Jeep in fourwheel low
gear, so after grating the gears awhile, we reversed downhill and
stopped at a little bay where Arlene happily collected white pebbles
for her garden while I swam in a warm, wave-washed pool.
Then we saw a pair of
Bokmakieries, flashing dazzling yellow chests against the sun. They
played around us, showing off. One stood on its head in some
ground-cover until its tail stuck perpendicularly in the air,
revealing the bird's
entire length of orange-green underside. As we made our way on a
proper dirt road towards the Lighthouse, we came down to the
shoreline and saw Whimbrels and more Whimbrels pacing up and down the
kelp-strewn beach. Among them paddled a Greenshank, staying close
by, waving its long down-turned bill, and posing against the sun so
that we could properly identify it.
The birds delayed us so
long we arrived at the Lighthouse too late to enter. On the way back
we paused to watch a small predator, but it kept moving from pole to
pole, too far way to identify.
Suddenly we were aware
that its mate was sitting just above us, watching us. It was a
female rock kestrel. Pleasant sight - but not as interesting as the
black heads among the gulls I spotted on a island rock not far into
the sea. By clambering over seaweed channels and through piles of
guano and broken sea-shells, I got close enough to identify among
the gulls, numbers of Sandwich Terns - adults in breeding, as well as
non-breeders and juveniles.
We drove home in the
sunset, arriving back to find the Lighthouse beckoning us across the
water. One flash. A second and a third flash. 90 seconds wait. . .
and there it was again. Flash flash flash, before turning its back on
us and leaving the horizon totally black for another minute and a
half.
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