You say that people who are passionate about something have a ‘spark moment’. What was yours?
My father was an avid birder. He had a strong desire to see a Bearded Vulture, so before a trip to the Drakensberg, I immersed myself in his bird books to learn as much as I could about it. Given its scarcity in the area, our chances of finding one were very slim. So we prepared ourselves for disappointment, but when a Bearded Vulture did fly over us, just 25 metres above my head, I felt like I was experiencing something magical. The adrenalin got me shaking and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Aside from being an author, you run Tropical Birding Tours to global destinations. How did that come about?
A geochemist friend who flitted around the world would e-mail images of birds to me from all over the place. Of course, it made me envious of his travels. I eventually joined him on a birding trip to Ecua dor, and a year later he was building Tandayapa Bird Lodge in the Andes.
He was pretty crazy but super creative, of the ‘build it and they will come’ type, but after six months it was still empty. While I was guiding around Cape Town, he and I chatted about starting an international birding tour company, in part to fill up the lodge. We had $20 000 dollars between us. Not much, but that became the seed money. We were living mostly on lentils for a long while afterwards, but it eventually took off!
What is your favourite birding destination in the greater southern African region?
This story is from the May/June 2024 edition of African Birdlife.
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This story is from the May/June 2024 edition of African Birdlife.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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.
