It’s November 2017 and I’m driving with two young colleagues, Kyle Walker and Claire Marchant, to do field work at a stone quarry on the rural fringe of Cape Town. We turn off the main road at our destination and wave to the security guy as we breeze through the gate. Even early on a Saturday morning there is work going on, generating a shroud of fine dust that populates the first rays of sun with gilded particles. As we bump along the rough track, the road becomes steeper and wider and takes us up and then along a sunlit fence line. To our left is a harvested wheat field; to our right the cavernous maw of the quarry is becoming more distinct, revealing layer upon layer of blue-grey stone, hacked and stripped naked by yellow machines. The resulting injury is a deep, ragged bite out of the hillside.
We park near the top of the quarry, gathering our gear as the engine ticks into rest and the dust we’ve kicked up settles. Outside, the sounds of crunching rock and clunking metal echo around the blasted amphitheatre. The overall impression is of a dead place, ravaged by human industry and beaten into apocalyptic submission. Remarkably, however, there is life here. Helmeted Guineafowl cluck and fuss in growing panic at the top edge of the quarry, a pair of Blue Cranes call from a fallow field nearby, Egyptian Geese honk raucously from the bowels of the pit and a Familiar Chat flits from perch to perch among the rubble.
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Esta historia es de la edición July - August 2020 de African Birdlife.
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EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Keith Barnes, co-author of the new Field Guide to Birds of Greater Southern Africa, chats about the long-neglected birding regions just north of the Kunene and Zambezi, getting back to watching birds and the vulture that changed his life.
footloose IN FYNBOS
The Walker Bay Diversity Trail is a leisurely hike with a multitude of flowers, feathers and flavours along the way.
Living forwards
How photographing birds helps me face adversity
CAPE crusade
The Cape Bird Club/City of Cape Town Birding Big Year Challenge
water & WINGS
WATER IS LIFE. As wildlife photographer Greg du Toit knows better than most.
winter wanderer
as summer becomes a memory in the south, the skies are a little quieter as the migrants have returned to the warming north. But one bird endemic to the southern African region takes its own little winter journey.
when perfect isn't enough
Egg signatures and forgeries in the cuckoo-drongo arms race
Southern SIGHTINGS
The late summer period naturally started quietening down after the midsummer excitement, but there were still some classy rarities on offer for birders all over the subregion. As always, none of the records included here have been adjudicated by any of the subregion's Rarities Committees.
flood impact on wetland birds
One of the features of a warming planet is increasingly erratic rainfall; years of drought followed by devastating floods. Fortunately, many waterbirds are pre-adapted to cope with such extremes, especially in southern Africa where they have evolved to exploit episodic rainfall events in semi-arid and arid regions. But how do waterbirds respond to floods in areas where rainfall - and access to water - is more predictable? Peter Ryan explores the consequences of recent floods on the birds of the Western Cape's Olifants River valley.
a star is born
It’s every producer’s dream to plan a wildlife television series and pick the right characters before filming.
