South Africa Bound!

Egad! Has it really been six weeks since my last post? Eek! That's scary enough for Halloween. I'm out of shape for this, and instead of blogging here, I'm spending way too much time throwing out content on Facebook and Instagram. I note my "captions" turning into paragraphs, turning into essays, and realize that I'm misusing these media; that I really should get those flying fingers back to their real home on this blog. Besides, I've got way more photos than anyone should try to share there. I'm making a nuisance of myself. This blog is where I should be putting my energy, getting those writing muscles back in shape after the big push of Saving Jemima.

Bla bla bla bla. Here's where I write and then delete a big self-confessional paragraph about all the stuff I've been dealing with as some kind of screwy rationale/apology for not blogging more often. Thank you, Phoebe, for helping me see this pattern and step around the pile of run-on writer's poo.  As my keenly self-observant daughter writes:
 
"Literally every time I've tried to start a post, I write one mega-paragraph about the swirling cocktail of emotions and thoughts in my head and why it's so damn hard for me to write about them, and then I get tired and/or distracted, and step away for long enough that the cycle begins again."

Elephant dreaming. Look at the tiny calf, and the sharp-angled forehead of its mama.

However. I have seen elephants. I've experienced hyenas.  And I've spent the last two weeks doing almost nothing but editing photos from the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous I accompanied, Oct. 1-11, 2019. I was asked to co-lead this trip because Bill had been lined up to do it, and at first it looked like he'd be too sick to go, and then it rapidly became clear he wouldn't even be here in October 2019, so I was tapped for the honor. Big sigh. Bill had been to South Africa once, but he never made it to The Kruger.

  This is how South Africans refer to their gigantic national park, where everything still lives and thrives despite the worst efforts of humanity to overcrowd and poach the wild things all away. Oh, is there living and wildlife and cool timeless awesome stuff going on there. So I did it for Bill, and for the subscribers who had signed up, and I did it for me, too, because I was pining for Africa. People say Africa gets into your blood, and it's true. It does. And one morning you wake up and say, "I need to go back." And I realize how incredibly fortunate I am to be in a position, whether by being asked to go, or by arranging my own group safaris through Holbrook Travel, to make that happen now and then. I don't take it for granted. And, like all my trips, this would be a working trip.

Scene along the Lower Sabie River, with Burchell's zebra and blue wildebeest coming to drink.

This was not a solo pilgrimage. Not by a long shot. We had 21 BWD subscribers signed up; two BWD guides (me and my dear friend Raymond Van Buskirk wheeee!!); two guides from Rockjumper Tailor-made Tours (Doug McCulloch and Rynart Bezuidenhout); an incredible bus driver for the Cape portion (Jacques Snyman); and three ridiculously good guides for the Kruger Park portion (Neil Watt, Heyn Neethling and Dirk Neethling).  That's a LOT of people to take on safari--25, not counting drivers, yeeoww! That means three packed safari vehicles and walkie-talkies between guides.  But Rynart Bezuidenhout planned and executed it incredibly well, and it was the trip of a lifetime. 

Leftmost guide: Doug McCulloch. Front row: Dirk Neethling, Neil Watt, Rynart Bezuidenhout, JZ, Raymond Van Buskirk, Heyn Neethling. Refraining from naming subscribers because some might prefer I not. Taken on Oct. 11, 2019, at Skukuza Camp, Kruger National Park, South Africa.

I was asked to write the trip up (in short form, which for Zick works out to almost 4,000 words) for the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous web page. I was glad to do this, because otherwise it could have just faded into memory, and this was a trip to remember forever. So I'll be relying on my trip report, painstakingly reconstructed, and embroidering where I feel like it, because blogging is embroidered writing. Illuminated, freeform. Like the birds and plants of Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens is traditionally where weary travelers arriving in the Cape go, in the peculiar haze of having flown for perhaps 17 hours in one (usually hellish) flight. Kirstenbosch’s psychedelic botanical wonders, spectacular mountain backdrops, and gaily colored birds make for a fever dream when one is sleepless and bone-tired, and a pure delight after a night’s sleep. Endemic Cape sugarbirds and southern double-collared sunbirds were easy to photograph as they clambered among the big proteas. 

 

Scale is deceptive here. The king protea is the size of a dinnerplate, and the Cape sugarbird is the size of a brown thrasher, with a super-long tail, too. Sugarbirds are adapted to and dependent on the Proteaceae for nectar. Imagine such a huge bird living on nectar! They eat other things, too, but still.

 

Here's a southern double-collared sunbird. That's what I mean by "fever dream." Sunbirds are the Old World equivalent (sorta) of our hummingbirds, but they're too big and heavy to hover a lot, so they clamber. Still, they feed on nectar and small insects, and there are lots of plants designed (in an evolutionary sense) for their decurved bills.

 Cape white-eye on an I-have-no-idea-what. There's a lot of that going on botanically at Kirstenbosch. I did my best at identifying the plants, and my best wasn't very good.

 

A spotted eagle owl winked at us from over the rim of a hanging planter as she incubated her eggs. It's that kind of place. Magical.

 

I thank the gods and the early planners of these gardens that Kirstenbosch exists, educating and enlightening people about the incredible native plants of South Africa. Truly, this country is the cradle of so many fabulous ornamental plants, grown worldwide.

 

This bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia) is one of them! Who knew it was native to South Africa? Not me...I had thought they were Neotropical. Just goes to show you what you can learn at a botanic garden. I like the way the honeybee  is buzzing it.

Some of the birds were hard to miss, like this Cape francolin, strutting in the sun on a well-groomed lawn. Do click on the photo to enlarge it, and see its elegant tweed herringbone pattern! Click on all of them.

This Egyptian goose was also hard to miss. Unfortunately, I determined he had an injury, which is what made his left wing kind of hang out. But oh, the glory of it, with that neon green patch of secondary feathers! And he'll do just fine here, because he really doesn't need to fly to get what he needs.

But when they do fly, there's a neat central breast spot, as if all the other stuff weren't enough. Egyptian geese (Gyppos, after you've seen a few hundred of them) are extremely common all over South Africa, wherever there's some water to be had. Nice bird to be abundant!

 We had to work a lot harder for the elusive Cape batis. Batises are adorable, quick, cobby little birds who don't let you contemplate them for long. Taxonomically, they're sort of near the bushshrikes. There are many, many shrike-like birds in South Africa.

 Two notoriously skulky and hard-to-see species—forest canary and swee waxbill—foraged calmly at our feet, starting a run of lucky sightings that was to persist throughout this trip.

Forest canary, taking a leap. A pair was finding insects on the brick sidewalk, and schlepping them to their young.

You never see either forest canaries or swee waxbills like this! But we did, we did! and there was so much more delight to come!

and next would be...PENGUINS!! This one carrying a little stick, because that was his schtick.

Flowers Were Yesterday. Waterbirds Today!

There's a water purification wetland in South Africa called Strandfontein Wetlands. It looks a bit utilitarian; square ponds separated by raised dikes, but any concerns about its aesthetic qualities, or lack thereof, are dashed by the spectacular birdlife using the rich wetland habitat thus created. 

Blacksmith lapwings are elegant, yappy and ubiquitous. We were fortunate to see many pairs with young on our trip, none close enough for photography. 

I've found that my camera absolutely loves blacksmith lapwings. It can see blacksmith lapwings. Ergo, it can focus on them. It can't see lilac-breasted rollers. It is really hard to get a sharp photo of a perched roller. When it flies, the high-contrast midnight blue edge on the wing sticks out to the camera's eye, and I can usually get a sharp shot of one in flight. I'll take it.

Back to the lapwing: my lens even caught the little spurs on the bird's wrists (blown up below). This is a feature shared by jacanas, who have fancy yellow ones, horned screamers, who have dangerous ones, and some other species. I believe the spurs originate from the bird's thumb. Hoatzins, those stinky weird hissing swamp birds from South America, have straight up claws on their wrists, that they use for climbing, Archaeopteryx-style. Doin' it old school. Anyway, I never knew blacksmith lapwings had spurs until I saw my photo. I love my Canon 7D and that 70-300 telephoto lens. So much. 

Black-winged stilt takes wing with the lapwing. Beautiful. 

  More high-contrast birds: A black-headed heron strides by a huge arum lily. We call them callas. Look, dahling. The calla lilies are in bloo-um. Those things are EVERYWHERE in South Africa. Coming up in marshes, on dunes, in pastures...man. An abundance of riches.

Black-shouldered kite eyes us from a Casuarina tree.

A black-winged stilt favors its right leg, which has a fish hook in its heel. Damn it. People. If you're going to fish in a sewage treatment plant stuffed with waders, can you please keep track of your tackle? How I wished I had my long-handled net.

Another stilt takes flight.

Quiet reflections from yellow-billed ducks, Cape shovelers, and another black-winged stilt.

There's an odd brown salvia abloom. The sunbirds love it. Must be full of spicy nectar. Quite a looker, once you get used to the flower color!

This mystery butterfly reminded me of our Harvester. It's feeding at a pelargonium!

Members of the Mesembryanthaceae (we call them ice plants) are called "Vygies" locally. It's pronounced Fay-ghees. You have to roll spit around in the back of your mouth to say it the way the Afrikaans folks do. I try but just end up sounding like I'm hockering. I loved this peach colored one!

The dunes were covered with Osteospermums and other composites. So beautiful! Masses and masses and drifts of spring color, everywhere!

I know. I said we were looking at waterbirds today. But...flowers. When I got a load of the botanizing one can do in the Cape region last year, I made sure to emphasize that in the trip description for Holbrook Travel. And we attracted some master gardeners--three to be exact--who were happy as warthogs in a waterhole, hunkered down appreciating these botanical wonders.

Such a great group, the garden mavens gettin' down low and diggin' those posies.

My kind of people.

Welcome to Oz

When you sit for 16.5 hours at a stretch on a jet flying through what seems like endless night, flying with the turning of the earth such that it stays dark almost the entire time, you can do many things. First, of course, you could choose to suffer, because you're in business class wedged in with not much room to spare. But suffering is relative, and this is not real suffering, but imagined suffering. You're on a jet, coming from two weeks' safari in South Africa, for Pete's sake. You are not suffering.

Second, you could sleep. You try. No, you can't sleep, bolt upright in an aisle seat. Scratch "sleep." Let it go.

Next, you could read. You have a good book, but everyone around you is sleeping, or trying to, and it seems rude to turn on your light. Hmm.

OK. What about watching movies? Well, you could do that, but after 1.3 of them, you're done partaking, because you'd rather be doing something productive than weeping over the plight of a young Irish immigrant, or trying to figure out what's so great about The Big Lebowski (dumb guys screaming at each other, far as I could tell). Let's face it. You're not equipped to be a movie buff.

I know what. You could edit photos. You can lose yourself for the eight-hour battery life of your laptop, sifting through the incredible images grabbed and saved by your Canon 7D. Yep. That's what you'll do. This is why I lug my laptop wherever I go. It alleviates suffering. It actually makes the flight home  enjoyable!

So I'm going to try something here, picking chunks of photos winnowed in that endless night from the 2016 Zicktrip to South Africa. I'm going to try to keep it short and sweet and let the images do most of the talking. On this trip, I worked with Holbrook Travel to deliver six natural history freaks from America into the capable hands of Lawson's Birding, Wildlife and Custom Safaris for a trip none of us will ever forget.

Our guide for the Cape portion was Lawson's natural history guide Kim Wright, well-versed in flora, fauna and avifauna, and despite being native to South Africa, just as freshly agog as we were at it all. Lovely combination!

First stop for the bleary, weary group was Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens outside Cape Town. It's the perfect anodyne to dark, stressful, cramped, and colorless jet travel--well-lit, soothing, spacious and colorful. You can wander and look and wonder at will. Off we go!

I could not resist this freshly-minted human and its attentive mother doing a photoshoot. And I remembered that particular tilt of the head that says, "I'm done posing for you."

Pulling back for the whole scene...

The late-afternoon sun was setting behind Table Mountain as we staggered up to the protea gardens at the top of Kirstenbosch.

A Karoo prinia, our companion for much of the trip, gave its endless, ringing tzing tzing tzing tzing from an aloe tip.

Cape sugarbirds, a much-sought endemic that depends on protea blossoms for its insect and nectar diet, posed atop enormous protea blossoms. This is a 20" bird, with tail, if you'd like some scale.

Heather flopped down with me to dig the pink Oxalis "weeds" in the lawn. We were definitely not in Pennsylvania any more!

The flopping, which I admit starting, proved contagious, and I knew right off the bat we'd have a lot of fun as a group! Gordon, Heather, Cat and Kate, all in a row, letting their cellphone cameras make the low-angle shots.

Watsonia looks over the Cape Town vista and our very happy campers.

Helmeted guineafowl remains vigilant, and screechy.

Silvertree glows in the late light. 

But there were birds amidst the botanical splendors! Oh! Oh! What was THAT singing in the Melianthus major?

Not a southern dusky flycatcher, like this one...

Not a sleepy spotted eagle owl...

It must have been a southern double-collared sunbird!

Here, plying a fresh pincushion protea for nectar. 

 Sunbirds are rather difficult to photograph, only partly because they're quick-moving. Most of the problem is that direct sunlight creates such high contrast in their reflective plumage that it's difficult to capture their local color. Deep afternoon shade, though, proved the ticket.  This remains one of my favorite photos from the trip. Behold the southern double-collared sunbird, knocking our eyes out as it sings while flashing its rarely-seen armament--candy yellow epaulets!

No, we're not in Ohio any more, and the fun is only beginning! My soul began a joyful inner squeeee! that kept up the entire trip. I occasionally released it out of my mouth, when it all got to be too much.