You have had a lifelong involvement with birds, having turned a schoolboy hobby into a career. You’ve stuck with your calling for a long time. For people who don’t know you, can you give us some of the highlights?
The birding bug bit me when I was 13 years old and I can thank many of the older members of the Wits Bird Club all those years ago – Graham Pattern, Royce Reed, Forsyth van Nierop, Des Hewitt, Clive Hunter and others – for fostering my interest and enthusiasm during my schoolboy and immediate post-school years. Highlights? I feel that my whole life has been an ongoing highlight, as opportunities have opened up for me all along the way.
My parents decided that I could never make a living from birds and suggested I might try geology instead. So when I finished school they sent me off to then-Rhodesia to test the waters by working as a field assistant for a geological exploration company and I lived a glorious year in the bush, spent mostly birding. From this experience, I wrote my first ‘papers’ on the avifauna of the West Sinoia district of Zimbabwe (with the late Richard Brooke) and the breeding habits of Retz’s Helmet-shrike.
I then went the geology route and spent seven eventful years in this industry before I realised that friends I’d made through birding, like Alan and Meg Kemp, Carl Vernon and Peter Milstein, made a perfectly good living from birds and that I was missing out. At about this time Nylsvley Nature Reserve came into being and the Savanna Biome Programme was initiated in this reserve. Joining this remarkable project provided me with the opportunity to change lanes and become zoologically qualified.
Denne historien er fra May/June 2021-utgaven av African Birdlife.
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Denne historien er fra May/June 2021-utgaven av African Birdlife.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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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.
