Gertruida is my name, Gertie for short. Me and the flock, we love it here on the smallholdings around Bloemfontein. Lekker plots to hang out in, the locals are friendly, not too many cars. We can sort out the cats if they hassle us and we avoid gardens with dogs. We don’t like dogs. Nothing personal; they just get a bit, you know, excitable.
We’ve got cousins all over the show: across most of Africa and quite a few overseas too. It’s actually more a case of having shacked up with humans who’ve taken us abroad on holiday and one thing led to another. Romance, new horizons. These days there are guineas in the Caribbean, Brazil, Australia, even the south of France. Can you imagine having to learn another language! I mean, what’s ‘ker-bek-ker-bek-ker-bek, krrrrrr’ in French?
Esta historia es de la edición May/June 2023 de African Birdlife.
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Esta historia es de la edición May/June 2023 de African Birdlife.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
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.
