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Ben among the Birds
WISE PEOPLE who know Ben realise that the best way to keep an eye on him is through binoculars, from at least 100 metres away. Even at that distance, you can tell he does not have the intelligence to be a birder. And he lacks other essential qualities. To be a birder you have to be sensitive, and patient. You have to have the ability to appreciate beauty in small, nervous things, and the ability to commune silently with Nature. You also have to have a good memory.
But . . .
Ben has none of these qualities - and he is singularly unable to commune silently. Ben blurts. He is the only person I know who openly reveals his lack of memory and brain co-ordination by asking loudly: "What's that disease called which makes you forget things?"
Ben's idea of enjoying an exciting birdwatch of waterfowl is to push a birder into the lake to see if he or she can swim. I remember once, riding with him on the back of an open 4x4 through African Miombo country. Noticing a heavy branch spanning the road at head-height in front of us, he shouted "Look at that purple-faced wotsit!" and pointed dramatically backwards, over his left shoulder. Naturally, we all turned to identify what he thought he had spotted. I was the only one standing up in the moving vehicle, so I was the only one hit on the back of the head by an outspread Guibourtia coleosperma. If you've ever been struck by a guibourtia coleopserma, commonly known as a Large False Mopane tree, you will appreciate the agony and the indignity of it. Being hit by a normal-sized genuine mopane is bad enough.
As I collapsed in the back of the jolting truck and felt the the bump rising on my scalp, a refined and sensitive birder - she looked like a frightened Flufftail - asked anxiously, "There isn't any blood, is there?"
"No", I said, smiling bravely at her, and ignoring Ben's disappointed grimace.
He's so crude! I wouldn't have fallen for such a kindergarten trick normally, but it was the last thing you'd expect on any birding expedition. Birdwatchers live on a higher plane where his kind of behaviour does not exist, and practical - even impractical - "jokes" don't happen.
Except when Ben is around. Later, on that same fourwheel drive around the lake, I was sitting in the back, and it was Ben's turn to make room by standing, It was then that I took my revenge.
"Duck!" I shouted, and Ben obliged, bending double to avoid a non-existent branch across our path. He unbent, flushed with the vain effort of looking distantly dignified in such comical and unnecessary gyrations. I said loudly, so that even the birders in the vehicle's cab could hear:
"Why are you falling about like that, Ben? Didn't you see the white-faced whistling duck on the water back there? That's the fourth sighting you've missed in a row."
Ben tried to appear aloof, as if he were engrossed in identifying a rare raptor on the furthest horizon. I persisted: "I'll just add white-faced duck to my list for today. . . How many have you got, Ben?"
"Eighty-three," lied Ben.
Sensitive birders averted their eyes as Ben tried to stare each one of them down.
"Duck!" I shouted again - and Ben was still smirking when the wag-en-bietjie thorntree caught him right round the neck, tearing at his flesh as it held on longingly, trying to wrest him from the moving truck.
Got him!
The ladybirder, who had been demonstrating such sweet concern about the bump on my head, shrieked.
She brushed at the dark spots spreading across her blouse.
"He's bleeding! He's bleeding at the throat! Stop the car! Stop the car!"
"It's a Landcruiser," I explained gently to our sweet companion. "And don't worry. It's just a tiny little thorn that pricked him near his jugular thing. Coming from Ben, it's more likely to be alcohol than blood on your dress. Don't worry. Here let me rub it."
She was quite vigorous in declining my assistance, but I lost her attention when Ben, hamming it up like an Indian mynha, clutched his neck, fell from his perch, and went "Aargh!" as he placed his head in her lap.
How uncouth!
She dabbed uncertainly at his scratches, and glared at me.
Someone in the cab, hearing the fuss, called, "What can you see?"
"Crimson-breasted dabbler," I shouted. And sweet Debbie, wiping more of Ben's bloodstained alcohol from her blouse, called, "Wait! I'm getting in the front with you."
Ben and I were both a little unhappy at this turn of events. The rest of the party looked even unhappier.
"Some birders don't have a sense of humour," I explained to Ben.
"Speak for yourself."
"Well, we've lost her. But look on the bright side. There's room now for both of us to sit down."
Ben's dying swan act ended abruptly, and he leered at the elderly matron sharing our bench in the back of the vehicle.
"Shift up, old dear, will you? I'm going to squeeze in here beside you, Pipit."
"My name's Robyn," she said icily. "And don't you dare."
Ben snuggled up and put his neck on her rigid shoulder. He may not be sensitive, but you sometimes have to admire his brute courage.
* * *
His bravery showed on an earlier occasion when he duelled at dawn, locked in the wood, with a famous Great Birder. I like to think of it as bravery, because there is nothing else you can say that is good about Ben.
It was our first experience of formal birdwatching. We strolled into it casually, simply because we were invited one weekend to KwaMaritane in the Pilanesburg. The game lodge is near the gambling capital of Sun City, where I knew there would be a good party. The reason I didn't give up birding immediately afterwards was that I believed I was immune to its inexplicable fever. It was so stupid an assumption that it is impossible to explain away. The excuse, I suppose, is that I was beguiled by Ben's unfortunate company.
After a nightlong vigil at the bar of the gamepark lodge - we were leaving so early in the morning it seemed pointless to go to bed - we set out in darkness into the bush. We did not have torches, thus no birds could be seen. So far, so easy. I merely dogged the footsteps of the Great Birdman, one of the nation's experts, following closely enough to stand on his heel occasionally. It meant he had to keep putting his boot back on, but it ensured that I did not walk into a thorntree in the dark.
"What's that funny smell?" inquired Ben, stalking right behind me.
"Fresh air," I explained, "with a touch of mimosa blossom."
Framed between the thorntrees were streaks of red and gold on the horizon. The dawn air quivered.
"I think its time for bed," said Ben.
But there was no turning back now. The sun rose shakily into the sky, and birds twittered to beat the band. My head began to throb, and I felt a sudden sharp stab of pain. At first I thought the cause of this was the excess of unhealthy bar snacks we'd been nibbling all night. But then it became clear that the Great Birdman had stepped aside to peer at something, and I'd walked into an overhanging branch. I stifled the cry on my lips and also stepped aside, so that Ben could have the same character-strengthening experience. There was a dull thud, but he seemed too pre-occupied to notice what had happened.
"Mossies" he was muttering. "Why should I want to look at mossies."
It was a good question. Mossies hop around your stoep and eat your dog's food. They'd bathe in your gin and tonic if you let them. When you've seen one mossie, well, you know the rest.
The Great Birdman was silent, but agitated. He was bending over; one hand holding his binoculars to his eyes, his other hand beckoning us frantically. I bumped into him again, and when he regained his balance he pointed to a thornbush ahead. I couldn't see a thing through my new binoculars except a dark fuzziness. Then he moved his head out of the way and I found myself staring in astonishment at a huge bird - well, it filled more than a speck in the magnified circle of my binoculars. It sat there, in the open, in the full glare of the morning sun, returning our stare from its background of bright green foliage. Even I, though colourblind, almost reeled back from the dazzle of its plumage.
"Crimson breasted bush-shrike," breathed the Birdman.
There was more breathing at my right shoulder. Ben was struggling with his binoculars. He quickly abandoned them, letting them hang listlessly around his neck, and just stared back at the bird.
"What do you think of that?" smiled the Birdman.
"I've seen things like it before. It's a technicoloured mossie," he said.
After a few hours of thirst-making stumbling through the grass, the ticks, the gnats and the thorntrees, I realised that Ben had a point. We must have seen fifty or more individual birds. The Great Birdman had names for every one of them. They all looked the same. It seemed, sometimes, he had different names for the very same bird. Certainly they were indistinguishable to the keenest in our little safari. Mossie seemed a good generic title. But the Birdman had a generic name of his own. ¯It was he who gave us the more technical term of LBJ. Elbeejays were everywhere. Rooibekkie mossies, which came in clouds, threatening to smother us, and weaver mossies and ordinary mossies which the Birdman called sparrows or pipits, or larks, or chats or warblers, whatever. . . all were Little Brown Jobs with undistinguished and indistinguishable features, all with little feet and a little beak, and blackish-whitish-greenish-yellowish-brownish feathers.
"When you've seen one, you've seen. . ."
I wasn't going to let Ben say it.
"What's that?" I interrupted and pointed wildly at nothing in particular. He stared. We found ourselves looking at a bird of such saffron-buttercup splendour it reminded me of the canary we used to colour-in with yellow and black crayons in kindergarten in a previous life.
"Canary," I told Ben, who intended automatically to contradict me, but now looked momentarily nonplussed.
The Birdman spoilt my victory by interrupting coldly, "Canaries are green, or brown. That's an African oriole, Oriolus larvatus.
Ben recovered quickly. "See! You were wrong," he told me triumphantly, "it's not a yellow canary. That bird has another unpronouncable name - which means its really a mossie".
Later I pointed out to him a beautiful spotted bird with a scarlet moustache.
"Knock-knock mossie. We had hundreds of those on the farm," he said. The Birdman identified it as a Bennett's woodpecker, Campethera bennettii. He showed us a Gorgeous Bush Shrike and a Yellow-rumped Widow - and by special request omitted the Latin names. Ben revealed a flash of interest when he heard the whisper, "Yellow-rumped widow", but his attention soon wandered. These were just birds - "birds of the two-legged variety" he kept muttering, even after it was pointed out to him that it made no sense. But this Gorgeous thing, and the Yellow-rumped one seemed closer to being birds of paradise than anything we had noticed before, and even I could see they were neither the shape nor colour of mossies.
Ben, however, stuck valiantly to his guns. He held his position even when the sun was well past the crown of the thorntree and he was long overdue for a beer, or gin, or more efficient regmaker. His courage was the more admirable because he refused to beg to go home. He spoke of the coolth of the game lodge bar without flinching.
His remarkable bravery was rewarded when we came round the side of the hill and, suddenly, saw the game lodge at our feet, snug beneath a green blanket of flat-topped trees.
The Birdman hadn't seen what was exciting us. (Eagle-eyed birders are one-eyed, so to speak, for they have blindspots in every area except their obsessive speciality). And we hadn't seen what was exciting him, for he was pointing frantically into an empty sky. When we finally did find what he was gesticulating about - much closer than the sky, only half way up the cliff-face to our right - it was an awesome sight. A dark hunched figure with cruel yellow beak; and another in flight, its talons ready for landing and wings outstretched as if to embrace the entire rock-face.
"Black eagle," said the Birdman, solemnly addressing the party without taking his binoculars off the sight.
"Now that's what you call a gi-iant ¯mossie!"¯ countered Ben.
* * *
If birding is the ultimate magnificent obsession - a point I shall presently set out to try and prove - then twitching is its most intense and ugly form.
In what is otherwise a noble profession or practice, twitching brings out the worst in humanity and in birds. Fortunately for those who are vulnerable to temptation -which means every human being, but especially Ben - twitching, unlike the more aesthetic forms of birdwatching, does have guidelines.
Birdwatchers twitch more than most people, for very understandable reasons. But it wasn't always so. At one time, under the value system pertaining to the gentle art of birdwatching, twitching was for the birds. No self-respecting birder would deign to be a "ticker", that is, one who notes down - actually counts! - every species of bird he or she is able personally to identify. In those days it was considered full of grace to enjoy the glorious variety of Nature - but absolutely gross to be acquisitive in this refined activity. So birdwatchers of the first half of this century had to twitch secretly - although the strain and the guilt often resulted in open facial tics. This, possibly, is the origin of the phrase "ticker".
The guidelines of a twitch are variable, but usually contain several basic unwritten laws: No sightings can be counted a single second before or after the time-limits. If the twitch is from midnight to midnight (only occasionally is it restricted to the more sensible period of post-breakfast to pre-drinks-time) then, even if you see a Mauritius Dodo walking down the road before the start, say at 23hrs 59min, you would ignore it. Of course, you would not ignore it to the extent of possibly running it down, for you would know that the dodo was already distinctly on the extinct list. You would probably follow it wherever it went, so as to be ready for the next minute.. When the twitch officially began, a minute later, you would write down its name, then rush off to find something else, like a sparrow. Fallen sparrows count just as much as live dodos.
When the witching hour strikes, a party of registered twitchers is free to switch on lights to look at owls and nightjars; free to switch off lights to feel for the other kind of birds (although birders don't do that sort of thing, and they don't use piggy-chauvenistic terminology). Free to have another drink and wait for the dawn. Birding is about freedom of choice.
No bird may be counted as sighted unless at least three in the party have seen (or heard!) it, and have confirmed its identity with diagnostic certainty. This rule causes a great deal of tension and friction. The three witnesses try hard to agree, but honesty is rampant when more than two people are openly demonstrating it. And obstinacy may also rear its flat head. There is always one in the party who will query everything, on principle. This causes tension. Friction comes when two birders have spotted and identified the bird, but the third witness can't see for looking. . . while the recorder is protesting because he has already marked it as identified.
"There! There, where we're staring at it. Like a sore thumb. . . You see that tree . . . no not that one. . . Look, you can see the lake, can't you? Now count the trees from the shore. One two three four.. . No. Not that way. The other way. Behind the fifth tree is another tree further back. There's a dead branch at five o'clock. Ignore that, and look round to eight o'clock. You see that hole in the foliage? Right next to. . . bloody hell! It's flown. . . No Harvey, you can't tick that one off. But next time make sure you don't bring this blind bloody Ben with you."
There is much team-spirit on a twitch. I recall once interrupting our hectic twitching to watch two teams in interesting competition. One team in a 4x4 truck in which every member of the group, including the driver, had binoculars clamped to their eyes drove round a tree-shaded corner and "came into collision with" a slowly moving Mercedes-Benz from which four people were leaning and peering into a bush. I say "came into collision" in order not to apportion blame. But the six passengers and two drivers involved, all of whom had been staring at the sky or the undergrowth through binoculars, did not hesitate to offer clear accusations and firm indictments. And the heartening thing was that every man and woman was vehemently loyal to his\her team and its version of the accident. Birders never lie, except when they tell other teams how many birds they've spotted, so the dispute required the judgement of Solomon. Unfortunately Solomon was singing songs to birds in another place, so the two parties appealed to us. We turned hastily away and peered intently through our binoculars into a thorntree. As we expected, the two teams instantly forgot their quarrel and rushed over to ensure they were not missing something.
I recount this episode in an effort to acquaint you with the compulsion of bird watching. There was another incident which reinforces my point. Four birdwatchers were once standing above a precipice, binoculars firmly stuck on their eyeballs as usual, as they swept the skies for swifts and swallows, and the cliffs for eagles and falcons. One of the party jerked visibly as he discovered something; stepped eagerly forward - and dropped straight over the cliff. It is said that every one of the birders kept their binoculars firmly clamped in bird-vigil, ignoring the tragedy. This included the man, falling through space, still clutching binoculars to eyes and screaming, "It's a Lesser Spotted e-e-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-gle!" I'm sure its true. Birders never lie.
Now that you appreciate how obsessive birding is, you will want to know why people go anywhere near so dangerous an activity. Why should anyone risk exposing themselves to the fever? The answer is, you don't know how bad it is until you get it.
Ben simply didn't get it. He thought the birds were there to provide an excuse for getting into the bush for a party. It was his fault that my charming sensitivity did not shine through when we set out on a twitch.
Take the occasion we failed to win a prize on National Birding Day. Everything was in our favour. We were in one of the three best birding zones in South Africa, only two hours from Johannesburg, where birds of every feather - from waders to vultures, from warblers to hornbills - patrolled the skies, paraded through the bush and paddled through the reeds. We had with us one of the most intrepid of Bird Men this nation has known.
But we also had Ben.
Ben was a one-man advance camp who would arrive ten hours before midnight - ten hours before the National Twitch was due to begin - in order to prepare himself. He would light a fire, and open a bottle. By the time the rest of us arrived he would be sitting by the embers, blowing into the empties. "It attracts the owls," he would say, in an owlish sort of way.
I used to believe him. I would empty my precious half-jack of Scotch in order to blow into it and call up the owls. They never came. Instead, we would sing rousing bird songs until we were overcome by drowsiness and good sense. We would suddenly see the folly of chasing feathers in the dark, and we would inspect an absolutely-bloody-final night-jar of our own, then rest until dawn, when the dew awoke us, and the birds called.
Thus prepared, we would join the rest of our team who would be found peering into a dead bush at first light.
"How many have we got?"
"Ten so far".
"What! Only ten sightings in nearly five hours! We'll have to do better than that," Ben would say, "Let's use our wheels." And he would get into the back of the 4x4 clutching his precious Kool Box. Because he still couldn't tell a mossie from a finch at five metres, Ben appointed himself catering officer for the long, arduous day ahead. I had the vital, key role of recorder - the angel who wrote down the name of every species of bird identified by any of the birding team and verified by two witnesses.
Birds are very good at twitching. They conspire together to conceal themselves under rocks and inside antheaps as your vehicle comes over the hill. They'll ensure that not a wing flaps, from horizon to horizon. Then, just when you are fed-up with the whole tedious enterprise and pause for some well-earned refreshment, they will emerge from their hiding places, en masse, and descend on you like bombers attacking an ammunition dump.
The team's binoculars whirl in widening circles, like anti-aircraft guns, and the birders shout names in staccato desperation.
"Lilac breasted, at ten o'clock. White rumped swift at four o-clock...." shouts one birder, rising in his seat to sweep the skies.
"See it. I see it! . .And lesser kestrel, high eleven. Eastern redfoot on its left," shouts a second.
"Got them! Mark them down!" cries a third.
While I'm trying to work out what an Eastern redfoot is, Ben is leaping about shouting "Mossie at six o'clock! Seriously, look at that bright orange thing!"
"Six o'clock? You mean on the ground?" some-one asks.
"I mean twelve o'clock. Twelve o'clock - straight ahead!"
"But you're facing nine o'clock."
"Bull," shouts Ben without lowering his glasses, "I'm staring straight at it. Wherever I face, twelve o'clock is directly ahead, for heaven's sake."
Ben's difficult to argue with. That's why he is catering officer.
Birding fluctuates between utter peace, and feverish action, with long bouts of tedious patient peering in between. Recording is the hardest, and thirstiest work. Especially after a long night of owl-watching by the fire.
"Ben, hand me a cold drink."
"Specify and identify."
"Hey! Stop that. Just give me a bitter lemon. . . ginger ale. . . anything."
Ben passes me a little can, even opens it for me, while I continue frantically recording the names of birds. It is the most deliciously refreshing taste encountered in all my times in the bushveld. Gradually the day improves. The magic, the adrenaline, the beauty of birdwatching takes over as the sun rises above the umbrella thorntrees and sparkles on the lake. The birds start settling down where you can see them, and stay long enough for you to write their names down.
I have two more of Ben's cold drinks before we head back to camp for breakfast in order to compare notes with Ken Newman, the Greatest of Birdmen.
"What's this?" asks Ken, looking at my list, "A beefeater?"
"Blue-cheeked Beefeater," I confirm.
"And this other beefeater?"
"Whitefronted," I explain.
"You mean Bee-eater?"
Ben howls with glee. "He's had three of these before breakfast," he grins, holding up a can. The label says: "Beefeater - the best of British Gin, with Tonic"
By whimbrel, but he's uncouth.
And it's his stupidity which makes him immune to the birding fever. Or perhaps it was I who, though charmingly sensitive, demonstrated a tiny degree of unwisdom in this regard. The bare facts are that Ben managed to avoid being lured into the insane obsessiveness of bird watching - not through desirable qualities, mind, but through lack of them. He failed every test of birdmanship, including the sex test.
A true birder has only one burning mission in life. It is not sex. Birders are not interested in it, except for purposes of identification. For them, sex is just a big O with a little upthrust arrow for boys, and a below-the-waist fertility cross for the girls. Birders can distinguish sexes, at a glance, even in flight. Once, on a flight to find a bird in a distant place, I asked the expert birder beside me to identify the passenger sitting with us. The passenger wore long blond hair in a ponytail and a golden earring.
"Large, upthrust arrow," said the birder, at a glance.
"And that one, across the aisle, flirting with the steward?"
"Small, wavering arrow," said the birder without a second look.
"What do you think of that one over there?"
"The one you've been spotting for the past hour? I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't hiding a double cross between her legs."
I'm still not sure if the birder was speaking symbolically and biologically, or figuratively. Birders, especially on the wing before they reach the forest, can be very cryptic. But their interests are always clear.
If you ask a birder if it has a hobby, it will respond in one of three predictable ways:
A birder will ask in extreme anxiety: "A hobby? Which one? No, not today. Do you have one?"
Or it will reply nonchalantly, "I have two."
Or, "I have the European hobby. But I think John was quite gauche in claiming the African hobby. The underbellies are so different, I don't know how he could make such a mistake, even at half a mile. . . Unless, you know, he did it deliberately." The last remark is uttered softly, with infinite contempt.
Birdwatching, with golf, is the sharpest test of character and human frailty yet devised. The contest is total, with bitterly fought competition. It is ruthless. More so even than croquet, that delightfully spiteful contest which hides under gentility and cucumber sandwiches. But in croquet you are able to hit a snivelling opponent clean off the field. In golf and birdwatching you compete against no-one but the most formidable opponent of all - your inner self. Birdwatching has one ultimate, excruciating quality. Unlike golf, birding has no real laws.
You are required to set your own standards, as high as practically possible - and then to bend your own rules when necessity appears to demand.
For instance you may decide, with admirable logic, that you will never (a vast word, never), never, ever mark down a bird as sighted, when in fact you haven't seen it. But there comes a time when you waver. You know, with absolute certainty, the bird is in that tree. You can swear on your mother's grave that it is there (in the tree, not in your mother's grave) because you can hear it calling incessantly in a voice that brooks no argument. There is no other call in God's great aviary like the call of the redchested cuckoo. It comes to you day in, day out. In your garden; on the road; in the jungle; in the municipal park, right across Africa in all kinds of terrain. Singing in Afrikaans, it calls: "Piet-my-vrou. Piet-my-vrou", until it has dulled your brain. But it never shows itself. You look at its picture in the bird book. You look at its stuffed likeness in the museum (while listening to its call above the traffic outside) and you examine it flying about in the zoo aviary. Then you succumb, and mark it as "sighted".
I had a huge contempt for such people, despoiling their vital Life Lists by claiming the redchested cuckoo in this way. My contempt was based on the fact that I had had the extraordinary good luck of seeing it one day in the wild, by accident.
Then I discovered that this practice of counting the "heard" as "sighted" was permissable in the very best circles! The finest birders in the world - the people who write the Bird Books - do it all the time, if not for their Life Lists, then in their careers. In fact there are certain birds which you cannot possibly identify unless you rely on sound rather than sight. Birding and its values system become as bewildering as life itself.
But I digress. My task is to explain why birders are so obsessive; why the sighting of a rara avis means more than fame or riches; why the glimpse of a very special LBJ, instantly identified while on the wing, can mean more to a dedicated birder than experiencing True Love, or winning a Nobel Prize, or making a million dollars overnight.
It is not merely the warm feeling of being able to pose as one of the cognoscenti, though an unaccustomed sense of superiority over common man does help. Nor is it only the humour that birding provides - humour that has to be filtered past the novices who cannot be silenced when trying to make jokes about "a Familiar Chat among the birds".
. . . Which means I simply have to digress again to tell you an absolutely true story which occurred to wellknown birder and art-gallery fundi, Everard Read. He was entertaining a guest on his private game reserve one day when the guest attempted to show suitable ornithological interest.
"What's that little bird over there? There! That brownish one, high in the tree?"
It was an indistinguisable little thing, far away, which even Everard could not identify at that distance.
"Oh, just an LBJ," he shrugged.
"How ever can you tell!" exclaimed the guest admiringly.
Which does little to explain the obsession, and why I was taking every precaution to avoid it. All I can say is that, once bitten, precautions are of no avail. Whenever I wasn't concentrating, I'd find myself staring at a bird that had settled nearby to tempt me. The situation required vast willpower. I found myself willing the bird to reveal its identity. Failing in this contest of brainpower, I would have to get out of the hammock or garden chair, go and find the appropriate Bird Book, identify the probably relevant pages of illustrations and descriptions, then bring the opened book to compare it with the unidentified subject. But I would have forgotten to will the bird to sit still, and it would have flown. Even this failed to cool the rising fever. Instead, I comforted myself with the thought that if the bird had stayed still, I would have mis-identified it, and confused myself further. So I would set off in search of another bird . . .
The fever increased during a visit to the Kruger National Park. I realised its gravity for the first time when we were watching a leopard, and my eye was distracted by an exquisite yellow bird sitting on a thorn bush behind the twitching cat.
"Look at that bird!" I said.
For the next two days my party treated me, apprehensively, like an ill and dangerous patient.
On a later occasion the symptoms returned when the passengers in my car - different passengers - jumped up and down and scrambled for viewing positions as a large pride of lions walked majestically in front of us, crossing the road to reach a water hole.
"Stop rocking the car! I'm trying to identify these strange little birds here."
"Birds?"
"These tiny little ones here with the blue beaks. Right here, beside the road. Almost under the car. Look carefully. What colours do you see?"
"We see lions," they chorussed.
Nonetheless, I was able in the end to identify the birds all by myself. There was no doubt, after perusing three books, and re-checking the evidence five times, that these were Blue Waxbills. Beautiful little birds. A wonderful moment of discovery. It was temporary, though. The books said the Blue Waxbill was "common". Newman's described it as "very common". . . as common, I suppose, as the Common Waxbill. I've noticed very few Common Waxbills in my time, but sure enough, from that moment on, wherever I go, I've been trying to avoid standing on Blue Waxbills.
None of this assuaged the fever. It grew even worse after James Clark and I and our daughters took a walk through the Kruger Park, ostensibly in search of peace, and elephants, and lions and things. We camped deep in the bush, not far from the Olifants River Gorge, where the cries of the hyena at night are drowned only by the whooping of the owls. Funny, I'd never noticed owl noises before. We walked for days, accompanied by a guide with a gun, past herds of giraffe and zebra, elephants, even the occasional lion. We looked conscienciously at all these animals, and at every aspect of Nature, but the only memories I have of the trip are, firstly, sighting my first three-banded courser and secondly - wonders of wonders -standing in daylight beneath the rare and beautiful Pel's Fishing Owl. Beauty is in the eye of the wotsit, I knew, because the year previously I'd glanced at a bird book and thought what a squat, ugly bird it was. Of course, I didn't know at that time how rare it is in birdwatching terms.
Collectors of paintings, stamps, books, antiques, steam trains, ladies' garters. . . anything. . .may begin to understand part of the obsession of collecting a Life List of birds. The rarer the item in your collection, the more beautiful it is. A grey-brown midget of a bird, with scrofulous wings and a dull bill, is infinitely more beautiful than a peacock - provided it is rare, or listed as "uncommon" at the very least.
Then there is the compelling masochism of it. The moral aspect of birdwatching - whether you can rightfully count a mere glimpse as a "sighting", even when the bird is properly identified by experts in your presence - is more masochistic than dying of thirst in order to be able to afford to buy a George III silver teaspoon.
There is also the degree of difficulty. No-one, surely, would knowingly and voluntarily take up birding if they understood the challenges and the consequences. Why not collect species of frogs or snakes, which have more clearly defined habitats? Why not butterflies, which hang about where you can throw your hat at them? Why not collect mushroom varieties, and have the fun of testing them on your friends? Or trees, which stand absolutely still and are easily visible? Trees of course, would be an obvious choice - except that, if you can't remember the names of your regular birding team, how are you going to remember things like Ziziphus mucronata or that familiar old confetti tree named Maytenus senegalensis?
But in these matters there is no choice. You either get hooked, or you don't. I became aware I was hooked after that trip with James. Instead of going home, tired but refreshed from bush-whacking, the four of us leapt into a car, and drove miles up through the game park in search of more birds. We knew there were palm swifts at Letaba, so we set off for that camp. Unfortunately the car was not designed for birdwatching. No roll-back roof. And it had a long-delay electronic alarm system which made stopping and starting a major undertaking. These two handicaps were to cause us major problems, but no barrier is too great for a birder.
That was why we found ourselves standing illegally, unfortunately but inevitably, outside the car beside some riverine forest. We were trying to identify a vulture, skulking away in a tree above us. There was no other way but to stand outside the car, using its roof as a support for our elbows as all four of us swept the tree with our binoculars. All we needed was a glimpse of its bill, or a look at the sly creature's back.
In our fevered concentration we failed to notice that traffic was building up. We failed to notice the arrival of a single vehicle. We failed to realise that we were, almost, a fatal attraction.
"What are you looking at?" a voice asked.
"Just birds." My eyes were still glued to the binoculars, pointing in the opposite direction, towards the tree.
The man in the minibus grunted. "Did you notice the big bird on this side?" he asked as he drove away.
I swung my binoculars around in search of another vulture which we must have missed. Filling my entire vision was a large eye and the beginnings of a tusk. The elephant was observing us from the opposite side of the road. . .not five paces away.
"Get in the car," I shouted.
Our group recognised the urgency in my voice. They must have thought a Sabota Lark had flown in the back window.
We were somewhat alarmed. But not as much as the car was. And then the elephant. When I tried, hurriedly to start the engine without the stipulated ten-second delay, klaxons somewhere under the hood blared out their protest. The startled elephant took one step back and wiggled its ears. Then it lumbered forward. Nothing the size of a mere Mercedes Benz would be allowed to shout like that at an elephant.
While everyone in the vehicle screamed contradictory instructions, I uncalmly pressed the electronic button and waited the statutory ten seconds. But the machine had switched into a different time mode. We were going to be stationary for the longest ten years in history. I remembered the story of the elephant - in these very parts - which had taken exception to the behaviour of a Volkswagen and had stamped on the car until the metal, and all the innards, except its passengers who had fled, were crushed flat. So flat, the VW could have been popped into a letter box and mailed back to Germany.
The elephant had walked round to the back of our car now, and appeared to be thumping his trunk tentatively on the roof. It was at this critical instant that the ten-year safety period ended, and the car signalled that it was now prepared to go.
We went.
"You know," said James, after a very long silence - perhaps another ten years went by, certainly he had turned grey - "You know, I do believe that was a Cape vulture we were trying to spot. They're pretty rare in these parts."
And, as any birder will know, that started a heated debate on the habits and diagnostic identification of accipitridae (raptors to you).
I might have been cured of birding on a later occasion - but for Ben. All Ben ever wanted out of birdwatching was a good party, and sight of a Narina Trogon. He knew that birdwatchers in Southern Africa were divided into two species: those who have seen a Narina Trogon, and won't stop telling you about it. And those who have not, and can't stop hunting for it. Ben badly wanted to be among the talkers, not the doers.
He wanted to be able to say, "You mean you've never seen a Narina!" then launch into his own triumphs, sprinkling the tale with erudite information. Well he can't, for reasons I shall explain. It is I who may legitimately talk of the Trogon - and I have found it be one of the exquisite delights of birding to wax ornithologically wise on the subject in his fuming presence. Picture the scene: Cocktail party; frothing champagne glasses; enchanting listener. I'm saying to her in Ben's presence:
"Did you know that the Narina Trogon was given that exotic name by Francois le Vaillant in his six-volume Les Oiseaux d'Afrique, published in Paris between the years 1799 and 1808. You did know? Well let me continue, my dear, for the benefit of this ignorant fellow here. During the course of Vaillant's travels through the Cape in the late eighteenth century, the Frenchman dallied with a young Hottentot woman whom he called Narina.
"He wrote of her: 'Her figure was charming, her teeth beautifully white, her height and shape, elegant and easy' - rather like you m'dear - 'and she might have served as a model for the pencil of Albane'. . .No, you'd better ask Ben who Albane was - it should be entertaining. . . Anyway, Vaillant described his Narina as 'the youngest sister of the graces', and he set out to win her. After the 'prodigality of my gifts paid deference to the power of her beauty', he says, 'the young savage and myself were soon acquainted'.
"The power of her beauty was so compelling that he named a colourful bird with a beautiful breast after her - Narina Trogon, the most famous oiseau of the sub-continent. Now isn't that a charming story? . . Have I seen a Narina Trogon in my very interesting life? Strange you should ask that. Here, take my hand. We'll sit over there in the corner and I'll tell you the whole story. . ."
Usually I have to draw it out a bit, because the story has only one point. The crux is that, Ben and I had spent a long day searching for the Trogon. After an equally long lunch Ben elected to have a "very brief ten-minute" post-prandial nap. By some extraordinary luck, in his absence, the Narina Trogon was coaxed out of the forest by our resident expert. Paul and I saw it, for one brief second, in all its glory. On our way back we met Ben hurrying down the path. "Break it to him gently," said Paul.
I did my best.
"Pity you couldn't keep awake, Ben. Oversleeping by five minutes means you have just missed the finest sighting of a Narina Trogon known to Man. I don't suppose there will ever be another chance in your life-time. Never mind, I'll describe it all to you, whenever you want."
It's triumphant moments like these which keep birders going. On and on and on.
[From The Itch of the Twitch... and a Twist of Tougher Tales, Zebra Press]
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