Reflections with an old Pel

Under the looking glass... Pel's me old pal?

A fortnight ago we spent some time in Pafuri (Limpopo Province, South Africa) in the far north of the Kruger National Park famous for its Crooks, clandestine military traffic & its avifauna. We returned there this last weekend on the strength of a single feather we found drifting on the Luvuvhu River (named for the Venda word muvuvhu or River Bushwillow).

On a whimsical leap of faith based wholly on personal experience, a liberal dose of good intent and the desire to add a single species to our 800 Challenge list, we gathered our 'stuff' & paid our dues. Was I sure that the feather was from a Pel's Fishing-Owl? In all honesty, no. That feather drifting 30 feet below could have fallen from a cast of candidates, not least of all an Egyptian Goose, a common resident on my lawn.

Moonlight reflections

If wisdom is an acceptance of our own humanity & perhaps too the realisation that the more we know, the less we know we know, then fortunately we have much to learn for wisdom is as rare as the dodo, a creature lost to irrational excess.

Under a late winter's sky my old pal Pel's had me reflecting; a touch upstream from the mainstream. For all money it's not pretty.

I recently submitted, unwittingly I might add, a checklist to the SABAP2 database inclusive of a single Burchell's Starling for the pentad nearest Punda Maria (KNP), a species hitherto unrecorded in that area.

Embedded in the program is a 'garbage-in, garbage out' safety-catch; a precautionary rider eliminating a likely misidentity & based on emperical knowledge. Where birds have not been previously recorded the database generates a full ORF (Out of Range Form). Simplistically, the ORF is part of the discovery process to establish legitimacy. I confess my initial response was one of indignation. A Burchell's Starling is as obvious as the day is long..!! A wise response to a routine inquiry? Not exactly...

Lark-like Bunting - KNP & also 'out of range'..

By extrapolation, posts on social media sites casting doubt on the veracity of recent sightings, old sightings.. any sightings and the irrational demand for conclusive evidence or in situ declaration of guilt in absentia is a condemnation born of ignorance and is not wise. Dishonest claims are merely echoed shouts when no one cares to listen. It adds nothing of personal value to the dishonest claimant but commensurately diminishes none at all from the community at large.

An unqualified interpretation of intent or agenda is an unsolicited opinion, which should remain unspoken. It's not our place to conjure up assumption.

Innuendo and or suggestive or subliminal accusation is written-trickery & as ephemeral as a Force 12 gale. It's an unpolished game of smoke & mirrors which endures; a shallow necklace of hollow victory.

A defensive response to a grossly immature and or irrational accusation is not wise; so too the condemnation of opinion or an image posted on a Facebook group, considered out of bounds or extralimital of the group's founding parameters. This too is not wise.

The suggestion that the photography of birds has condemned the 'art of bird-watching' whatever that is & from someone who should know better, is not wise. Clothes, they say, do not make the man, nor does his glass or accessory elective.

Bohm's Spinetail - [Pafuri (Aug) KNP]

Keeping a list / not keeping lists of species seen or heard is a personal record of events out in the field, any field. Deriving an artificial hierarchy or sprouting song is an exercise of foolishness. Ship-assisted, wind-aided or carried by flood, hurricane & storm is a self-imposed, introspective limitation on a personal list. To diminish another's recorded list is never wise. What place have we? This disingenuous pecking order makes us peckers, nothing more.

Condescension, casual dismissal, brittle arrogance, envy and self-styled relevance is as foolish as winter rain & a polygamous short-sale to the highest bidder. This too is not wise.

Dickinson's Kestrel - a regional rarity

The Pel's alluded me again but I could have sworn that feather had me close... Reminds me of another shore-based urban Pel's. Strange & surely not? Play the leaves as they fall..

I offer no apology nor do I make inference however inferred, interpreted or insinuated. Attach little relevance to these words. These are my words & this shoe fits me well. The journey lies ahead. Walk on.

River-dance.......! Ten years & two left feet.

Lower Sabie - by night

We'd heard that Leeupan, an ephemeral pan, someway north of Skukuza in South Africa's Kruger National Park, was the temporary home for a family of African Pygmy Goose & an Allen's Gallinule.

We needed both for the challenge but we were neither concerned nor in a hurry to make the trip. Both species are readily common elsewhere. That all changed, however, rather abruptly, as soon as we'd processed another reliable reporting of River Warbler in & or near Lower Sabie, east of Skukuza.

Allen's Gallinule

River Warbler is a drab sod; largely nondescript and a skulking species, more common under the right conditions than the manual admits. It's also our bogey-bird, bar none; a veritable nemesis! We've dipped on R. Warbler too often to accurately recall and we have, for all intent & purposes, elevated this master of stealth to virtual mythical status.

Sanity would dictate that we leave well-enough alone. Even so, history will show that we've lived a legacy of spontaneity and how could we deny ourselves the joy of another fruitless chase...

African Pygmy Goose

First order of business, African Pygmy Goose & Allen's Gallinule. Those who know these things will  claim that assumption is usually the mother of the proverbial..

I must admit I hadn't lost any sleep contemplating the possibility of dipping on all three species. Nevertheless, some two hours after first arriving at Leeupan we were, in fact, facing the almost farcical proposition of dipping on all three. Sheer luck, a cavorting hippo and a generous dose of perseverance, akin a Bieber-stalker, put us on both the geese & the gallinule. Flushed from their 'twitcher-shelters' on the far side of the pan, both the goose party (8 goslings) and the gallinule spent a short while in full view, in close proximity and on our side of the pool.     Veni, vedi, vice! 

River Warbler - singing post  [marked in yellow]

At 5am the following morning we vacated our cots, bright eyed & bushy-tailed, sharpened our hearing & embarked on our quest for River Warbler or bust...

In the time we took over two scones & a cup of tea we had to concede that the two birds reported in camp were conspicuously silent .. Faced with a pensive foreboding & a prudent sense of deja vu, we exited camp, a tad glum & turned west. Precisely 2.3 km westward on the H4-1 & at 6:15 am; a little way down the immediate bank of the Sabi river - the once-heard, never-forgotten call of a male River Warbler.. Suffice to say we spent the next two hours holding vigil and for our years of pain & suffering and the repeated iterations to bemused Big-5 adventurers of 'ag nee, it's only a bird...' we were rewarded with 4 incredible sightings of the same individual!

Forget playback. It doesn't work. From our elevated view here's what we observed. For those who don't know this bird spends most of its time on the ground, in the thickest muck imaginable. After a brief bout of calling, mid-bush (1 meter or so above ground level) the bird would free-dive vertically, head-foremost & bungee-like to ground level where it would disappear from view for a variable time before returning to the same perch to call and repeat the process. This he did four times over the next two hours. Truly amazing.

It's difficult to describe our emotions - surely elation; some relief & perhaps too, a small measure of sadness, a contradiction in terms if ever there was. The mystique, fragile & the myth disrobed! For ten years we'd been led a merry dance; the steps of which had proved, 'till now, too painful to accept. We'd been weighed, measured & found wanting! A drab sod no more... What a beauty!