by Alex Horne
As I admired the winter light bravely straining to shine through the nectar on to the white wall behind, a small bright bird landed on the perch, stuck its beak through an opening and drank deep. It clearly was delicious.
The bird wasn’t too shoddy either, as small as a goldcrest, smaller perhaps, but even more slender, graceful, and brightly coloured. It looked like the hummingbirds I’d fallen for in Costa Rica.
On my way out of the house and down to the beach I chatted to George again. He wasn’t a birdwatcher, he explained, but then he didn’t have to be. ‘The birds are here anyway,’ he told me, ‘they’re a part of the whole soothing package.’ Yes, he put up the bird feeders to draw them closer to the rooms, but that wasn’t birdwatching, that was common sense. ‘I just like the birdsong,’ he said, ‘that’s where I find my peace.’
It sounded to me as though George was a robin stroker. He was a birdwatcher, but a lowly one. What’s more, over the course of our brief stay he helped me identify every bird that came to dine.
‘They’re our sunbirds,’1 he said proudly as one arrived for a quick drink. ‘And what you’ve got there is a greater double-collared sunbird. Ah ha! And that one …’ – another shiny red and green bird had arrived – ‘… is a southern double-collared sunbird. Great.’
‘Great,’ I agreed.2 Perhaps he wasn’t a robin stroker. A birder in denial? Not a dude surely …
A third bird dropped into the bar, a darker, more mysterious customer. ‘My favourite,’ said George quietly, ‘an amethyst sunbird. Beautiful.’ He was definitely a birdwatcher. I thanked him and headed off to the beach. But only after finding out that the spheres were simple Opus Garden Ballet Hummingbird Feeders, filled with a liquid wittily entitled ‘Perky Pet Instant Hummingbird Bird Feeder Nectar-red’.
I’d visited the sea far more than I usually would this year thanks to birdwatching: Al Jazair Beach, North Berwick Harbour, the Exe Estuary, Pagham Harbour and now Nature’s Valley Beach, perhaps the most impressive of all. It was perfect: golden sand, blue sky, shimmering sea, every cliché you could want and no other people. I paddled in the bracing water, gasped and looked out at the Southern Ocean, a watery no-man’s-land between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Next stop: Antarctica.
Further out on the still water I could made out a handful of birds: a couple of large African seagulls called Cape gulls, and a few large African cormorants called Cape cormorants (I didn’t know their convenient names until George helped me out later). Returning to the shore, I almost bumped into three large black waders with red eyes, red legs and long pointy beaks, waddling along the beach, the only other walkers beside me. They marched in single file straight past me without even so much as a hello.
This time I knew what they were called. I’d passed a sign on my way down through the dunes to the sand, welcoming me to this corner of the Tsitsikamma National Park with the words: ‘No dogs, no guns, no fires, no tents, no picking the flowers.’ I wondered if there were dog-loving, flower-collecting, firestarting, hunter-campers about, at whom this was aimed. Below these rules was a picture of some black and red birds and a paragraph of description. They were African black oystercatchers, a rare, distinctive and raucous wader. Just a few years ago theirs was an endangered species, threatened by human behaviour. The chicks were disturbed by bathers, nests crushed under the wheels of off-road vehicles. But here at the national park, where most things were banned, they were thriving once more. While the numbers of noisy humans were down, the numbers of noisy oystercatchers were up. Like the red kites back home, this was a success story. I felt hopeful. But I probably didn’t feel as relaxed as Rachel.
2 September
Between Nature’s Valley and Cape Town we made a couple more stops, at Plettenberg Bay and Knysna. Waking up in Plettenberg, we lazily watched dolphins cavorting in the waves below our bedroom window before heading out on a boat to watch whales hurl themselves in and out of the water just yards from our fragile vessel, spraying and splashing us till we were drenched. I’d never seen whales or dolphins in the wild before. They really were mind-boggling – more so, even, than the results of the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. I’m not sure if whalewatching is a hobby (or if it is, whether I’d want to do it every day), but it was an experience Rachel and I will never forget.3
Further along the coast at Knysna, I’d been tipped off about a particular bird I had to see, the Knysna lowrie. Found only in the forests of South Africa (and the forest around the town of Knysna in particular), it belongs to an outlandish family of birds called turacos, one of which I’d seen in the zoo back in February. This variety has a particularly long tail, an orangey-red bill and bright green plumage. Its bright green crest is tipped with white: it is ridiculous looking and rare, the perfect birdwatching combination. Rachel and I wandered through the woods for hours, eyes trained on the tree tops. This was similar terrain to the rain forests of Costa Rica, the bird a similar quarry to the quetzal. But on this occasion, we had no guide. I was the guide. And I didn’t find the bird. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as watching the dolphins in bed or the whales from the boat and for perhaps the first time in the year I felt like I’d overstepped the birdwatching mark with Rachel. I was forcing my bird obsession on our holiday, and although she said nothing, I can’t imagine it was all that much fun for her.
But then, as we neared Cape Town, we did see a bird that both of us fell in love with: the blue-helmeted guineafowl, an unlikely hero both in name and appearance. We saw these overblown chickens with increasing frequency by the side of the road as the city slowly built up around us. They were quizzical, silly, unnecessarily elaborate birds, distinguished by a bony casque perched on their heads like a top hat, and we found ourselves becoming terribly excited whenever we saw one. They formed large groups and chased one another, bursting into a clumsy follow-my-leader-style flight when disturbed. They made our journey fun. They kept us going. If there’d been kids in the back of the car, they wouldn’t have got bored. At times Rachel and I even stopped the car to have a good look at their funny heads and wobbly legs. They weren’t mind-boggling, but we loved them.
And while the whales and lions would inevitably muscle their way into our stories and memories, it was birds like these that really made the trip for me. I did have the ulterior motive of defeating Duncton, but the more birds I saw, the more I appreciated them, thanks largely to their sheer variety. The birds here were all so different.4 In just this first week of the trip, I’d seen vultures, ostriches, sunbirds and these ridiculous guineafowl; big birds, small birds, majestic birds, birds that looked like jesters, birds that looked like models, noisy birds, graceful birds, soaring birds, sprinting birds, shuffly birds and stunning birds. The whales were very big, the dolphins very playful, but they looked like whales and dolphins. The birds were surprising.
We arrived at Cape Town late in the afternoon, in good time to meet Mat and Morri for an evening of food, drink and catching up at a bar in the heart of the Victoria and Albert Waterfront. We dumped our bags, and headed eagerly down to the harbour. I hadn’t seen Mat for five months and was excited. I had the same tingly feeling as when I climb the steps at Anfield and emerge to see the fans on all sides and the pitch stretched out below. Walking into the bar, I scanned the faces for Mat and Morri with animated impatience.
People always look slightly different when they’re in a strange place and you haven’t seen them for a while. I think that’s sometimes why the first hour or so after a long-awaited reunion can be a little awkward. They might look tanned, more relaxed, or just be in clothes you don’t normally associate them with. Mat also had a beard. Mat’s got a beard, I thought, just like Duncton! We raced over to their table and hugged without thinking, hesitating or flinching. It was a great moment. Unfortunately I had also been abstaining from shaving for the past week, so I had half a beard. Our faces became stuck together like Velcro, and we had to tear ourselves apart with a loud ripping noise.
We all gabbled about how good it was to se
e each other. Mat was clearly as excited as us. He and Morri had travelled all over Africa in the last few months and they’d been looking forward to seeing familiar faces and sharing their stories. Mat had bought a bottle of fine South African wine and had four large glasses at the ready. With great ceremony, he proudly glugged out four generous measures and raised his own glass. ‘Here’s to you both. Welcome to Africa!’ he pronounced with a broad grin beneath his beard. At that exact moment a Cape gull (and thanks to George I was able to say for sure that it was a Cape gull) shat in Mat’s glass. Cape gulls are big birds. The shit made quite a loud splash. The wine turned decidedly murky. The four of us were briefly stunned then laughed a lot. Mat ordered another bottle of fine South African wine. Any awkwardness dissolved. We were off.
5 September
That fine South African wine became something of a feature of our time with Mat and Morri. On our second day we took a minibus out to the vineyards around Cape Town and ‘tested’ far too many varieties in the Stellenbosch region. So when it came to the one ‘Designated Birdwatching Day’ that Rachel had granted me the following morning, the early start was not necessarily welcomed by all.
Birding Africa, the group I’d met at the Rutland birdfair, had sent me a laminated itinerary explaining what was in store for us, complete with a checklist of the birds we might see. It was an awe-inspiring document. It was like a Panini Sticker Album. This was going to be a big day. Mat and I, at least, were as excited as we’d ever been as kids on Christmas Eve when the four of us arrived at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens at 9 a.m.5 Our guide was called David, which I liked. Perhaps I could have a birdwatching guide on each continent called David. Already, thanks to this David and my London David, the name David had overtaken Chris and was only one place behind John in my ‘most popular names in Alex’s mobile phone contacts’ chart.
What I hadn’t known was that this David would be quite so professional, quite so young, or quite so heroic. We got out of our car looking dishevelled and hungover. David was waiting for us by his in pristine khaki shirt and shorts with a stout pair of walking boots and a fine pair of hard-worn binoculars round his neck. He must have been six foot three inches tall, tanned and weathered, but not weather-beaten: this man looked like he’d been in a battle with the weather and won. He was hardy. A telescope was slung casually over his shoulder, like a toy. I’m probably not a good judge of these things, but he must have brightened up the day for Morri and Rachel. I thought he looked tremendous.
‘Hi guys,’ he said in a tremendous voice, ‘are you all ready to go birding?’
‘Yes please, David!’ we all shouted eagerly.
Soon after we set off I told him, a little shyly, about my Big Year. I was worried that this might make him think less of me, as a fellow birder and rugged sort of a man, but he didn’t seem fazed. He told us that every week he helped ‘bird tourists’ see as many species as possible in a short period of time. ‘Everyone has their list,’ he said, ‘even me. I’ve seen 821 species so far. That’s not too bad.’
His father had been curator of these beautifully kept gardens and it was soon clear he’d taught David well. He knew every flower in every bed, every tree and every shrub, and of course, every bird that was flapping about, making the most of this floral smorgasbord.
‘OK,’ he’d say when he’d trained his own binoculars on a particular tree, ‘over there you can see a brimstone canary. To its left there’s a swee waxbill. And below that there’s an African olive pigeon. Have you got them?’
‘Not yet, David,’ we’d say, but soon we would.
This was efficient birding. This was prescription birding. This was David’s patch and he knew exactly what would be lurking in each corner. He found us Cape sugarbirds and Cape buntings low to the ground, a rufous-chested sparrowhawk and rock kestrels high up in the air. We followed him like soldiers obeying their general. There was no chat, no wandering off. We were on a mission.
Piling into his jeep, we headed off round the Cape Peninsula towards the southern tip of Africa,6 stopping off to grab olive thrush, Cape white-eye and karoo prinia, amongst others, on the way. Already we’d seen so many species they were blurring in my mind. I couldn’t remember what a Cape bulbul looked like minutes after I’d seen one. But that wasn’t the point of the day. David’s job was to get his clients as many birds as possible. Wasting time trying to learn about each one wouldn’t help.
We only stopped briefly at the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. ‘It’s not very birdy here,’ he told us, just a touch dejectedly, ‘but the scenery is great, and we might get a Cape siskin.’
We didn’t get a Cape siskin, and David was irked. Still, we did see a monkey and we were at the Cape of Good Hope, so the four of us didn’t mind too much. And if anything, this dip in the day seemed to spur David on. Back on the road, he drove slowly with the windows down, ear just out of the window, listening intently and occasionally stopping when he heard a particular chirrup. ‘Orange-breasted sunbird,’ he would say and we would wait. Ten seconds later an orange-breasted sunbird would dash out of the gorse. This man was good.
The next stop was Simonstown, a village on the west side of the Cape that had gained fame and prosperity thanks to one particular type of bird, the penguin. There are penguins in South Africa. This was news to me, big and very good news. Penguins! I hadn’t expected to see penguins in the wild this year, but here they were, wandering round town. We wandered round with them, as did a thousand other tourists.
This colony of African penguins had turned up here on Boulders Beach in 1985, entirely unannounced. They hadn’t called ahead; they hadn’t visited the area before. It’s almost unheard of for penguins to settle in an area already inhabited by humans. But they arrived en masse and settled in for the winter. Not looking a gift penguin in the mouth, the village sprang into action. Walkways were constructed so the tourists wouldn’t disturb the penguins’ nests. The penguins were grateful and stayed. In fact more penguins came, bringing with them more tourists. Penguin-themed shops opened up along the streets. Twenty years later, they’re all still there. They even have the right of way on the roads. The village is run by penguins.
There are only two other penguin populations on mainland Africa, one on a quiet cove near whalewatching hot spot Hermanus, the other on Robben Island, the island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for eighteen years and where Mat, Morri, Rachel and I spent the following day. It was a peculiar experience to be shown round the prison island by a former inmate, seeing where men like Mandela were forced to carry out hard labour in a lime quarry, and trying to comprehend the significance of the place while coming across penguins waddling about. At one point I burst out laughing when one fell over. No one else in the group saw the incident and I looked rather insensitive. Perhaps I was.
Of course, David wasn’t content just to show us hundreds of penguins. As the tourists gazed at the fluffy penguin babies,7 he pointed us towards crowned cormorants out at sea, speckled pigeons in some nearby trees and a yellow-rumped widow (yes, that’s a bird too) in a bush. We were up to twenty-six species for the day and I had overtaken Duncton’s total for the very first time.
This little landmark seemed to relax David. I think he had taken it upon himself to ensure that I caught up with Duncton. As my guide, it was his duty to help me out. So on our way to our last stop, we were able to chat about his birdwatching life. His life was birdwatching. His job was birdwatching, birdwatching was his hobby; everything he knew was birdwatching. He’d been around the world watching birds. When I mentioned Lee G R Evans (as the UK year list record holder), he told me he’d met him at the birdfair a few years previously. ‘Does he still run his mobile discos?’ he asked me.
‘Erm, I think so,’ I said, desperately trying not to sound like a dude.
He and his birdwatching friends even had their own unique birdwatching system called a ‘Dream List’.
‘If you dream you see a bird that bird counts for your list,’ he
told us with a shy, self-deprecating smile. It had taken all day to win sufficient trust for him to share this secret. He knew I was a comedian. I had told him I wanted to tell Duncton’s story on stage. I had stressed I wasn’t going to mock birdwatchers, but he was well aware a revelation like this could be a great illustration of the obsessive nature of birdwatchers. I tried to convince him that I didn’t find his obsession particularly strange or amusing, that in fact I understood it. During the World Cup, I told him, I dreamed about finding my final sticker, the Tunisian goalkeeper, and sticking him into my album. But I couldn’t count him. David could count his dream birds.
Even better, according to his rules, if someone else dreamed that you saw a bird, that also counted for your dream list. So this birddreamingwatching system not only encapsulated the total passion birdwatching arouses in some people, it was honourable too. If you dream about someone else seeing a bird, you have to call them and tell them. And what a strange phone call that must be to receive:
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
‘I just thought you should know that you saw a white-tailed sea eagle last night.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. We were riding on the back of a whale along the Norfolk coast. My mum was there too. We only saw it briefly then I was back at school and you’d gone again. I had a fondue for tea.’
‘Great, thank you!’ Tick!
Before long we arrived at our final destination. We’d been out for over eight hours and Rachel and Morri were starting to flag. If I’m honest, I was too. I was looking forward to some more of that fine South African wine. Luckily this was a climactic last spot. ‘This,’ David told us, ‘will blow you away.’ This was Cape Town’s biggest and best, the one and only, unmistakeably smelly, Cape Town Sewage Works. Mat and I knew how to show our girls a good time.
For some reason, we were the only people there. It was low season, I suppose. There were no tourist shops selling cuddly toy versions of them, but there were loads and loads of birds. Sensing our weariness, David grew even more efficient, and we birded without getting out of the car. It was like my own carbirdwatching in Bahrain, except that David knew what everything was. He reeled off species after species, giving us just enough time to see each one as we passed by: ‘sacred ibis, red-knobbed coot, southern masked-weaver, purple African swamphen …’ Our lists grew and grew, the names ever more fantastic. We stopped by the exit for one final scan of the area. Way off in the hazy distance, David pointed out a large group of pale birds. ‘Do you know what they are?’ he said with a smile. I didn’t. Mat did.