Bird hide ...
Too now, ornithology has not counted as one of my hobbies. Sunday afternoon, it was cold, wet and windy. The Dutch Boy popped in and I thought, my having spent Saturday down at the Point, we'd settle down to addressing the state of the nation over some tea and that weird shit he smokes.
No such luck. "We're going to Rondevlei," he advised me. Now, I'd promised to accompany the Dutch Boy on a bird-watching expedition at some stage, but I had Clifton, summer, and a Niek Hockx-type photo shoot in mind. It would make for a wonderful photographic essay.
Birdshide revisited ... the TV series
Rondevlei's one of the few pieces of wetland we have left on the Cape Flats. Stuck at the arse-end of Grassy Park, it's a surprisingly secluded, small and quiet stretch of reeds and water populated by myriad birds and a family of hippopotami. Acclimatised to the wind and rain, we discovered most birds had done a duck and were skulking in the reeds. The Dutch Boy carries a book, but he doesn't need it. I've no idea what the hell we saw out there, but I do know the reserve is home to every bird type found on the Cape Peninsula.
Again, unfortunately, bird-watching is one of those pastimes ideally suited to an SLR camera. So it was back to making do with the trusty old Canon S3. Except that "making do" doesn't work too well with sacred and glossy Ibises blown to hell and gone on a howling north wind among clouds the colour of a graveyard.
African Darter ...
But we try and, for the ludicrously low price of admission to the reserve, we visited each hide and I got a feel for the place — the hides are along a path not more than two kilometres long. I'm not sure what the bird above is. It's an "African something-or-other" frequently confused with a cormorant. It's not a cormorant. It's an "African something-or-other".
Ornithologists less qualified than I do not know this.
Come a quiet, windless, sunlit dawn, I'm going back down there to take some pictures of the pelicans, herons, spoonbills, egrets, terns, kingfishers, dabchiks, and the countless small birds we glimpsed flitting about. Rondevlei's much like Cape Point — just a lot closer to home.
There's something about birdsong blown by the wind through the long, dry reeds ... I'll find out what it is.
