What got you started in birding? I was born in the area behind Moria, the Zionist Christian Church (ZCC) in Limpopo, but I grew up in Magoebaskloof and went to Appel Farm School and ZCC Secondary School. When I left school, I trained as a petrol and diesel mechanic, but work was hard to find and I didn’t like the big city, so I took a job as a pottery assistant in Magoebaskloof in 1996. My employer gave me the task of feeding the birds that came to her feeder. When I began asking questions about them, she gave me a gift, a Roberts bird book. At first I found birding a little boring on my own, so I started little bird clubs at local schools – the learners really enjoyed it.
I began reading bird magazines and joined a bird club in Tzaneen as well as the environmental club in Haenertsburg. They had a talk about Blue Swallows by Steven Evans, then manager of the Blue Swallows Working Group, and he was fascinated to see a young black guy among all these senior citizens! He invited me to join him on a visit to a grassland the next morning, but I couldn’t because I didn’t have transport to get there at 5am, so some club members very kindly came to pick me up. Between 1998 and 2002 Steven and I remained in contact and he realised that I was seeing special birds in the area, so he started sending birders to me because there were no guides there. He then put my name forward for bird guide training at Wakkerstroom. The rest, as they say, is history…
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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.
