On 5 January last year, everything changed. After 16 years of fighting with superhuman courage and inspiring grace, my wife Chantell took her final breath while holding my hand in the ICU. You might think that with a prognosis as severe as hers we would have been better prepared for that moment. Perhaps she was, being leagues braver and more enlightened than me, but I have never been less ready for anything. The contract we had was to live every day as if it were our last. That led to an incredibly rich life, extracting the maximum joy and appreciation from even the smallest moments. We laughed all the time. We travelled South Africa, then lived abroad and began learning a new language, all while making running repairs to her ‘uncooperative biology’, which she treated as an irritation rather than the death sentence it was touted to be. We explored more of Spain than most Spaniards we met, during an unprecedented time of travel restrictions and invisible threats that would have dissuaded most people. But not Chantell. And if she was in, so was I, always. We lived a hundred lives condensed into a few incredible years.
As I crouched next to the hospital bed holding her hand, I read the words tattooed in flowing script upon her wrist. I’d read them many times before, but for the first time they felt like they were meant just for me: ‘Never give up’.
We had a grand plan before returning home from Madrid, yearning for some time in nature after three exciting, but trying years. We made a list of the places we’d go, starting with a month in the Kruger Park, then Botswana. A Suzuki Jimny configured as a micro-overlander, we agreed, would go anywhere and would serve our needs.
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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.
