Shining Light - Hugh Chittenden
The outstanding traits of Hugh Chittenden are his relentless drive and deep curiosity. This became clear to me at our first meeting, when I was an intern at the Durban Museum. Hugh arrived one morning, tanned and with a bulging folder under his arm. He was freshly back from an expedition to Mozambique, having spent weeks camping rough in the bush while studying some of the region’s rarest birds. In his folder were copious field notes and jaw-dropping photographs of alethes and akalats, and in his mind were questions, lots of them. Was White-chested Alethe only a winter visitor to the Mozambican coastal plain? Why was African Broadbill so common in central Mozambique relative to KwaZuluNatal? What was the host for Barred Long tailed Cuckoo? With Hugh’s flair for discovery, taste for adventure and uncanny eye for an ornithological mystery, the southern African birding fraternity is lucky to have had him tirelessly committing himself to the field for the past four decades.
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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.
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The Walker Bay Diversity Trail is a leisurely hike with a multitude of flowers, feathers and flavours along the way.
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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.
