Who is South Africa's best birder?

Some of us go where angels fear to tread & venture into unchartered country, foregoing peace & quiet until the geography's mapped. Listen to this - 

At a recent twitch for rare birds; & in the company of lunatics, an inappropriate utterance clattered across the crumbling Bridge of Decency & resonated on the souls of all who heard it. I've been on it, ever since. Here it is:

Who is South Africa's best birder? 

There is, at last look, no authoritative information; - & at face value, this is an unanswerable question.

Even so, instead of banishing the idea to a dark place from which there is no hope of return, I'll give it a try. What follows is a spit at the devil but these are riotous times - & I stand accused, apparently, of insensitivity; hurtful in itself. I have feelings too.

So where to begin?

If 'to bird' is a verb, it follows that he / she who birds is a birder; a gender-neutral term - praise be! Prone to bursts of asocial behaviour & resplendent in cryptic garb, a trait common to both sexes - separating birda from birdo would be subjective at best. 'To bird' or 'birding' is, therefore, an activity pursued by birders looking for birds in a manner which can only be described as intense. This radical approach to watching birds excludes the charlatan who occasionally ventures outdoors to look-at-birds. These are bird-watchers - simple folk. Simple folk have been known to allocate free-time (even occasionally) to activities not considered birding ie: not conducive to advancing our understanding of 'why we exist'.

A birder is a general practitioner, always. He / she who starts an affair with a single species & / or who confines his / her time to a specific category / family of birds, is a specialist & whilst endearing, he / she is a charlatan. He / she who does not keep 'a list' / ie: 'a written record of birds seen', will be defeated by the confusion of time - it's a flawed plan - ie: charlatan.

He / she who identifies him / herself by the number on his / her list is a tin-pot dictator. The onus is on the tin-pot to present a compelling raison d'etre against the claim. A tin-pot = quack [charlatan].

He / she who writes books & / or who wastes time scribbling in general, unless he / she is adding to 'the list' [see above], is expending energy on pursuits away from the field and is less proficient by definition & in practice. A proficient birder is not a charlatan. He / she who keeps 'a list' must produce, on demand, verifiable & irrefutable proof of a claimed sighting; preferably in the form of a full-frame photograph. Where 'a list' is not accompanied by supplementary proof - 'the list' is subjective & open to interpretation. "We are not animals; we live in a society" [JJ]. 

A birder cannot rely on reputation or a hitherto clean slate for free beer. He / she is only as good as his / her last call. One bad call = charlatan. Apology accepted - trust denied!

A birder is expected to know the Pantone Matching System; the Hex colour code & the Full British Standard colour fan. How else will he / she be considered colour-competent? Colour-competency & birding-proficiency are bacon & eggs ie: of the same pan.

An encyclopaedic knowledge of vocalised & mechanical sound ie: call / song & the other monosyllabic notes recorded or suspected; is a universal skill & the only concession to 'encyclopaedia' - knowledge is gleaned in the field. See proficiency [above].

A birder is sharp-eyed - a mould of vision & foresight. Vision & foresight are crafted in the field. Field-craft is a gift forged on the anvil of graft - hard work mostly. Practitioners are intelligent, immune to the paralysis of ordinary and like pigs on an Alba truffle - consistent & talented. Consistency, dirty nails and the nuance of giss [jizz] are the keys to the avian stars.

So much for the theory...

Practically, if 'best' defines rarified air, rather than Charlie in a paper-bag of clowns, then the answer to 'Best birder in South Africa' is fairly straightforward; elementary even.

Who spends the majority of his / her time outdoors or in the field exclusively in pursuit of birding immortality? Who is regionally competent in all habitats - air, land & sea? Who understands the minutia that separate species which, prima facie, are inseparable? Who takes sound by the scruff & observes unseen; and finally, who has an irrefutable track-record; is possessed of humility, honesty and has a compelling claim on 'beyond reproach'?


Who is South Africa's best birder?


If I'm honest - I can't think of anyone who walks on water like the biblical Peter but;.. I have my suspicions...



 




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Kruger 300 - Day 6 [MEGA!!]

Bone, bloody idle

Is there anything more annoying, less useful even, than a leopard & her cub next to the road? It’s bloody chaos & we’re usually in the thick of it. Glance left & Alisha hangs on the cub’s every flirtation. ‘Can I chase my tail mummy?’ Golly-gosh wasn’t that impala sirloin tippity-poo?’ blah, blah flippity blah. Get off the road! There be birds about...

… but 1^st, a public announcement: - Tamboti, a satellite camp near Orpen, is a bush-camp favourite of ours even if the accommodation is dirty, run-down & creeping back to the wild. That said, in Sanparks’ defence, most of us are porcine both in appearance & in nature. We are given to cravings at the me-me-me trough. Few give the proverbial for anybody else esp. when the facilities are shared; no more beautifully illustrated than at a shared ablution block – a NIGHTMARE of locker-room smells, mud, wet toilet paper & my all-time happy face – hair in the basin. What’s with that?  

Waking early to a soft drizzle, the 1^st coherent thoughts registered on the assembly-block of cold-steel-logic ran something like this - ‘praise be the great twitcher in the sky’ - followed up by: ‘It must hold the bird … for sure!’ - ‘Yes indeed, it might.’ & then ‘It hasn’t before, probably not’ before I concluded with ‘It’s a fool’s errand; damn bird’. Sinking back into the cot I shared this sequenced discourse with Alisha who has the uncanny knack of hearing what she wants to hear & when she wants to hear it … We were a Go, Go, Go! The Egyptian Vulture had been seen near Singita; we were only 60km-away AND vultures remain grounded in bad weather but then… those bloody leopards.

By the time we’d pushed & shoved our way to somewhere near the co-ordinates 1^st reported [4:30pm the day before], we’d sold our morning for a long-shot at an upstart. The bell had tolled 8 times. Up above the sky was dry & vultures wheeled. We were looking for a single bird – close enough to the road to see it – at one locale – in 2 million hectares. A needle in a needle-stack. The tree was empty [as I said it would be, remember?], our souls were laid bare; the anticipation - a lead balloon; mine eyes watered – dust I think. Alisha’s far-away-look premised a full-blown charge & my ears recoiled in trepidation. Leopard & lion lay in the dust of another failed attempt – 3^rd day running.

And then over one hill – then another a bird rose from off the ground & settled in a tree. It shook itself – turned around & ‘decloaked’; a pale lemon visage – choco-brown plumes. There you are my beauty [I knew it all along] – worth every finger-jab, every hurtful glare – up there with the gods – Pharaoh’s Chicken – me-me-bloody-me!  

PS: the bird was also reported some way away @ the same time - MAGICAL stuff indeed! 

Please, Sir, I want some more!

Oliver to Tankatara's twist, we went down for more.

Port Elizabeth - Eastern Cape, South Africa

Joined by a twitching doyen we flew on *Mango from Johannesburg [JHB - ORT] to Port Elizabeth (PE) for another crack at the Tankatara Pans where a potential giga lurked ... in plain sight.

[*Alisha's a cracker ...]

Fortunately we were delayed at ORT for 30 minutes; the pilot stalling for discharge papers or his license. I can't be sure but I was smug anyway.

The 3pm return, later that afternoon, was also a back-breaker; but nothing that a few chemicals and a firm rub on things couldn't fix.

Whilst we were enjoying the EC's - (Eastern Cape's) hospitality last week, (read it here), a remote (very bloody remote) chance exists that I missed Southern Africa's first Upcher's Warbler.

There it is - plain as plane can be

Confined to the Tankatara Pan's most conspicuous, exotic willow, this large hippolais warbler has held the birding community in a state of enthralled confusion ever since its incidental discovery, earlier in the week.

It's not exactly a poser but it's neither a skulker nor a denizen. It flicks, bobs & weaves and calls a repeated, (softly spoken), tuc or tac like two stones being clacked in mild-irritation rather than in spite; - audio recognised in our DNA when music was a rolling stone & fire was a spark. Whatever the distraction - I missed it. Had it been a flying biscuit I would have found it easily. Fortunately, & undeniably, it flew in after I'd been sent home - a relief then.

Why the confusion?        

For the answer to that - we need to revisit the scribblings of Aristotle, that senile old goat who couldn't tell his rufous-browns from his olive-browns. He & his mates, Theophrastus & Hesychius, described these long-distant migrants as small, unidentified ground-nesting birds ie: hupolais - a fact contemporary ornithologists tried to disguise (we're a proud community) by calling this four-species genus hippolais but in truth (& betw. us pls.) - hupo or hippo: the confusion still rings true today. Fortunately, molecular analysis cut four (4) species from the original hippolais-eight - the fired-four now treated within a genus of their own ie: iduna. The remaining hippolais-four [please follow!] are the larger species of the original hippolais-eight.

Look @ that flattened-profile. Impressive. 

So where to begin?

The Tankatara bird was originally dismissed as an acro - ie: a Marsh Warbler (Acrocephalus palustris) which it isn't. Why? It's about the same size (13cm) as a medium-sized hippolais; has fairly non-descript facial patterns & in an excited state, can raise its fore-crown feathers to appear imposing ... In our spring, worn-plumaged Marsh are greyer & have pale underparts. Prima facie - the broad-strokes fit but the detail was lacking.

The more generic features of hippolais include a square-ended tail, short-undertail coverts & a flattened profile from mantle to tail.

Hippolais - a more squared-tail

Prima facie the Tankatara mystery-warbler presented with the classic features associated with the species described under hippo; or was that Iduna? Either way, we agreed that Acrocephalus it wasn't. The acros sp. were, therefore, dismissed (without recourse) & forbidden any further play in the debate.

The Iduna genus are similar to Hippolais in structure, behaviour & plumage. The wings are rounded and the tarsi *scutellated as in Hippolais. [*transverse scales on its legs]. 

So the equation was simple - was our bird an Iduna or a Hippolais?

Consensus ruled out Iduna [yes I know - consensus is what consensus does]. Hippolais then - and the slipper best fit an unlikely Cinderella - Upcher's Warbler. [Who-would-have-guessed-it? A Southern Africa first!]  

I am - therefore you aren't

A hush descended on the South African party, however, like an ill-tempered neighbour bearing warrants, when word reached the vine that our Tankatara fantasy-bird was none other than an Olive-tree Warbler; Cinderella's brutish sister. This prognosis carried the weight of international standing too: the scriptor curie Vasconie of the Warbler Manuscripts (revised) - a contemporary Aristotle, albeit Israeli rather than Greek.

The Upchucking of milk & cookies on FB was a crying shame - & nobody should cry over spilt milk. Faced with the imminent horror of a list with one-tick-less, we - 'the damned' - spooned into the foetal position & contemplated a fate worse than death itself.  We'd collectively bumbled the ID of a commonplace, long-distance migrant & a regular visitor to these shores (albeit a national rarity in the 1990s).

We'd bummed - we bunch of bums - a kick to the knacks & niks would rub it better. 

... and then from the ashes a few whispered hallway-rants. 'Nah-ways' - the common thread. [preceding expletives not important here!]

'Nah-ways'?     Why?

Jimmy-the-Gong?

'If it clucks like a chicken; & walks like a chicken - it's probably a chicken.'

Then again, under a coating of crumbs and batter, what is undeniably chicken at face value, might, in fact, be bunny-rabbit, or mini-mouse or Jimmy-the-gong. Food for thought then.

I suppose in the realms of aberration & possibility, there exists the makings of a children's story - a story of courage in adversity, a life-lived with no identity - & a chance that our mystery-bird could be atypically:

• fond of patchy, scattered scrub & stoney ground;
• thin-billed - & otherwise weak in the chops;
• fond of a circular / dip & dunk / fanned or flared let's-tango-tail; Olé!!
• pale from the knees down;
• short in the wing with projection on the runty side of 'maybe'; and
• tanned from its sojourn over African hill & dale. Nobody likes grey or beige especially when on holiday.

The more erudite will have measured tertials, primary-projection & secondary spacing. Others will add to the speak & highlight posture, tail-wear, silvery wing-panels and facial non-descriptity (eh?). These & a plethora of other, well-researched notes & comments, none more valuable than the one written & published [here], promise something new - rather than something borrowed. What's more, this published commentary is written by THE domestic wholesaler of all things brown & yucky AND even better still, by somebody who actually saw the bird going about its business in it's flitty, flighty - pitter / patter way.

Ornithologists - a friendly reminder for you:      Don't dismiss the witness!

His conclusion? Upcher's Warbler [woohoo!] but wait... {eh?} - caveat - ... let's not rock the willow more than we need to... It's rocky ground! (Yes we saw that. Wasn't that the point?)

The note's postscript secured the author an invitation to next year's Bird Fair, the parthenon for avi-luminaries & for members who toe the party line only.    It read - ... You lot, (ie: the great unwashed), must 'decide for yourselves' and worse still (& this is where I get a little teary) -  'Who am I to say?'     What?     Say it isn't so!    He who has led us to the promised land of pipits, larks and all things L. B. & J. - not adamantly stickler or moulded in brass for all prosperity but brittle & fair and open to suggestion? Now there's a thing - I'll be damned.

... and so it comes down to all of us, the nogschleppers of the field. Meditate! Scrutinise the fabric of your conscience & gott im himmel, I'm just going to say it ... make-your-own-call!

Well I say this. It's an Upcher's Warbler and so there! Live with it; but don't do as I say - do as I do. What do I know anyway?    Caveat!

Live with it but don't do as I say - do what I do. What do I know anyway?    Caveat!