Kruger 300 - Day 15 Punda Maria for OWP

I've tried, failed. She obviously can...

Spending 5 hours unmoved, implacable & in the midday sunshine (+40°C) is stock-standard routine. Lunacy too, I would guess, if the stares from the normals are the fulcrum of sanity. Then again, lunacy is a bolt of enlightenment & it strikes, swiftly, if you embrace the sudden release of control. 'Slightly mad', from my side of the banana egg, is life lived at its plumpest...; them lot, over there, air-drawing against the scrambled hex, are ... awesome! What point raving sane if mad as a hatter makes more sense? 

An early climb up the back-end of Punda Maria camp

In any event, I was seated on a Sanparks-issued wooden-slat chair, elevated & in a position of sweeping authority, close enough not to be too far away. Not too far away, that is, from the cynosure of my attentions - a mini-birdbath; a water-feature tucked-under / close-to a terraced drop-off at Kruger's Punda Maria camp. Alisha & co. were further back, multi-tasking as grown-ups do - in the shade, I think. That would make sense. At the time I daren't look away - for at that instant he & she & them might have sipped & gone - a fate worse than no ice @ tea-time. I wasn't taking chances. 

... close-enough not to be too far away

I's a crafty fox, I am. Foregoing the left-hand side of the terraced wall, I took a seat on the less traveled - less obvious RHS [of the wall]. On the left side - civilisation. On the left side - stone paving; engineering & the fruits of educated labour. Terra firma. On my side of the wall, less-firmer; more terror. Leaf litter mostly - some air too. Diagonally across from me & lower down - the birdbath. Downslope - Tarzan's digs. Shrouded in a cloak of invisibility, in the bright sunlight; a skill not lost on everybody else btw., I crouched [seated] behind a three-legged camera, side-on to Tarzan's front door ie: at right angles to the downslope. 

I sat, the undercover-boss - patiently at vigil for Orange-winged Pytilia (OWP); a denizen seen drinking recently, in a small flock, at the birdbath. We'd seen them before - close-by, but a bird's not seen [officially] until you 'haven't seen them' but on camera. 

In dignified repose...

At Alisha's 'there-they-are-my-master-who-always-puts-me-in-the-right-place @ the-right-time...' [she's younger than I am; honest & has better eyes] - I recomposed myself [bolted] upright at this truth - thereby uncloaking & simultaneously breaking the air-seal that held the two legs on the RHS of the wooden-slatted chair to the lie I thought was solid. Both legs plunged into the leaf-litter; down to the hilt. The left-hand-side did not [bless 'em]. In an instant physics catapulted mea corpus out of the sanctity of comfort - arse-over-tit - 20 yards downslope. There I came to a thundering rest having dined [extensively] on leaf litter, some Bric-à-brac &, potentially, one or two invertebrates. I checked my two front teeth. All cool. Everything else... fair to middling. Apart from my own good self & the RHS of the chair, nothing else had moved - the camera's position remained unchanged - the birds, now some way above me, sipped on [or so I will be told over the next millennia at the retelling of it]. 

... there I came to rest..

OWP - young & ready

Excluding my own strangled snort & a choke or two - time stood still. Having extricated myself from the vines & the thorny embrace that held me lovingly in the downward-facing dog - I turned, looked up & confronted a row of faces [ie: the entire camp] lining the parapet somewhere near the angels. For the shortest time - general sympathy. ... and then ignominy & for the longest time - tears, uproar, a paroxysm of screeching mirth - & a communal dance of crossed legs & replay pantomime; Alisha the loudest & most animated of them all. It was a shameful display; a disgrace! Laughing at the fallen is a shocking indictment of poor form!  

... excluding my own strangled snort, wheeze & a choke or two - time stood still ... held, lovingly, in the downward-facing dog
  

Magnificent, regal - we salute you.

Even so, I returned to my seat - with all the skulking dignity I could muster - a return to magnificence in a ripped T & a pottyful of sh1T in my hair; via the long-way round. Accompanied by blue-faced sniggers, abruptly cut-off snorts of hilarity & uncontrolled flatulence - from them nutters, not me, I spent the next hour or two snapping off a roll. 

Has the world gone mad? Orange-winged Pytilia don't just drop in & fall at your feet!  





PS: we're grateful to Mrs. Amanda Walden for bringing Kruger's celebrity OWP to the birding flock's attention. Nicely done, madam!