Sunday, June 13, 2004

Twitching in darkest Scottsville

We have - and I don't want you to think that I am boasting - five birdbaths. They are strategically placed around my cottage garden. There are also three bird feeders, one of which is stationed near the kitchen. I get the seed for them in 10 kg bags from the farmers' market at Camps Drift and thought that it probably came from somewhere like the Free State but I am told it comes from mainland China. So my wild birds are getting Chinese take away.

The best viewing spot is from the kitchen window but we have a paranoid schizophrenic Pin-tailed Whydah, which dives at us and head butts the window. If you are not used to it, and you are just visiting, the noise can be a gin-and-tonic-spilling occasion. Unfortunately neither of us can speak Whydah, although I have been known to speak Bulbul on occasions. Whydah appears to be one of those difficult languages with lots of suffixes and prefixes. It sounds like a lot of expletives too as our Whydah seems to be very cross with us. We have come to the conclusion that he has a general attitude problem because he treats all the other birds in the same manner and jumps on them like a cat. We have also been wondering what the collective noun for Whydahs might be as apparently they can congregate in flocks. Perhaps it should be a riot of Whydahs. One could add it to those other delightful collective nouns of birds that twitchers like to casually mention, such as an ostentation of peacocks or a murmuration of starlings.

Our main bird population is a flock of Laughing Doves, who give out a most relaxing background cooing in the early mornings, although recently they have begun to sound rather mournful. This may be due to the rand exchange rate and uncertainties about the coming election. As you know there is nothing worse than a flock of depressed Laughing Doves so we are looking for a dove psychologist, but they are difficult to find these days as most of them have emigrated to
New Zealand. Our next plan is to mix some Prozac in with the Chinese take away and wait for the happy coo to come back.

While on the subject of coos, we have been discussing the delights of waking to the squadron of hadedahs that take off from our roof at
5 am. The suggestion is that we cross-breed the doves with the hadedahs and get a hadedah that coos like a dove. This needs more planning because if the experiment goes wrong and we end up with doves that coo like hadedahs we will have to leave home. This is obviously "work in progress" and needs more discussion over the Twee Jonge Gezellen, Muscat de Frontignan.

What has really cheered up the garden is that suddenly about two weeks ago, there appeared, to our amazement, two budgerigars. They must have made a break from someone's house nearby. They are a brilliant lime green and yellow and were rather shy for the first few days. We thought our wild bunch of raptors would have finished them off but they are now the dominant pair. They fly in low like a couple of Impala jet fighters and ferociously attack and defend their portals at the bird feeders. The most offended by this intrusion are the Red Bishops. We have three pairs and we weren't sure whether they were Anglican or Methodist when they first arrived but two of them have beards and high crests so we think they are probably Greek Orthodox.

Added to all this is the fig tree that is now bearing fruit and literally shakes with the different varieties of birds all helping themselves. There are Red-Winged Starlings and a lot of assorted weavers with disgusting table manners who seem to be able to eat and excrete simultaneously. These bigger birds tend to intimidate a whole collection of little brown jobbies who hang around in a holding pattern to await their turn. The majority of these seem to be sparrows of the non-farting variety and they adopt a storming strategy of flying into the fig tree in formation only to be driven off in furious hand-to-hand combat. So it is not all country bliss and quiet birdsong here in Scottsville, which as you know is the ornithological centre of the universe. And after the budgerigars, what next? We have decided that if either of us see a flock of flamingoes in the swimming pool we are both going to stop drinking. Oh, by the way it is not a flock, it is actually a flamboyance of flamingoes.

·  Chris Ellis is a city GP and author.

Publish Date:
25 February 2004

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