Giving back to birding

Duncan McKenzie is one of the top bird experts in the country. We sat down with him at home in Mbombela and talked about citizen scientists, narina trogons and why he feels so lucky to be able to give back to the activity that has defined his life.

- ANNEMARIE VAN DER WALT

It's a wintery morning on the I banks of the Limpopo River in the Kruger Park. A group of birders turn their heads from side to side as Duncan McKenzie rattles off yellow-breasted apalis, tropical boubou, African palm swift, grey-backed camaroptera, sombre greenbul, mottled spinetail...

Duncan is our bird guide on a three-day trip in the Makuleke concession in the Pafuri region in the north of the park, hosted by EcoTraining and BirdLife South Africa. He stands still, listening to bird calls in the bush, pointing in different directions as we try to get our binoculars to focus.

Duncan (44) is at home here in Makuleke, where he's been an EcoTraining instructor for years, in addition to his day job as an ecologist. He's also a trustee of the John Voelcker Bird Book Fund, an author, and the top contributor to the Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2 (SABAP2).

Months later, we sit down for a chat at his house in Mbombela. As we talk, I can see him registering every bird call in the garden. After a while his wife Linda and son Nathan (pictured, right) come home from school. Nathan is only 10 years old but he's already ticked more than 530 birds off his life list. Duncan smiles with pride - he grew up on a farm near Vryheid and only started his list at that age.

"My parents loved the outdoors and we travelled far and wide," he says. "But I was an only child and I had to entertain myself."

Without a mentor or even a bird club in the area, he had to teach himself. On weekends, when his parents picked him up from Weston Agricultural College in the KZN Midlands, he'd ask them to drop him off a few farms from their own so he could walk home through the veld.