The Best of South Africa With Zick: It's Now or Never

It don't rain but it pours. I've been kiiinda busy with the new book, Baby Birds, coming out on Tuesday April 12. That means all the orders I've taken from you fabulous supportive readers are going out on Monday!! I just got a message from my friend Cynni, Postmaster at the Lower Salem Post Office, that I've spent $802.61 there in postage in the last two weeks. That ought to help save some jobs and help it stay open, in this climate of rampant rural school and post office shut-downs. I feel good about that, and you should, too. 

I'm really excited to launch this book. Won't lie: I've been nose to the grindstone for a very long time,  finishing the paintings for the book over the last two years, then, last spring, going into hyper-production mode,  getting all the writing and art turned in; dotting the last i's, answering editorial queries, getting the art scanned, proofing color...the project of 13 years all coming to fruition. It takes a full year from the time I turn everything in to when the finished book arrives. Because I was involved in every aspect of production, that year FLEW by, seemed like nothing.

Other things have been whooshing past my head in the meantime. Like the deadline for deposits on my next trip to South Africa. Holbrook Travel got an urgent message from our service partner in  South Africa last night, that our reservations at Kruger Park are going to be cancelled if they don't receive deposit money by early next week. ARRK!! Kruger is like that, because everybody wants to go there. You have to book at least a year in advance. They've been holding our booking for several months now. I haven't been sitting on my hands, y'all. But it got past us.

So. I'm making a last-ditch pitch. If you've always wanted to go to South Africa, and you think you might like to go with an excitable Science Chimp pointing out everything from dung beetles to marabou storks to fruit bats, the time to decide is NOW.

Arm-twisting...

At the Three Rondavels with part of 2016's intrepid crew.  (The part that didn't mind abysses. You will note that I'm on the safe side of the view!)

I can guarantee you maximum fun and beauty abounding. 

Wildflowers in the Near-Karoo. Me: STOP STOP STOP LOOK AT THAT (piles out, drops to crouch)

 Endangered blue cranes dancing like nobody's watching. DANCING. Floating up as if yanked by a string, bouncing, their tail ribbons undulating. Might be the world's most beautiful crane, and that's saying something.

Bontebok with calf, awash in wildflowers.

Bizarre, fantastic, eye-popping wildflowers. Get down low and your mind will blow.

Cape sugarbird with proteas. How much would this bouquet cost in New York City? And that's without the endemic bird!

Epauletted fruit bat sp., Skukuza Rest Camp, Kruger Park, delicate ears swiveling, green-gold orbs looking right into my bat-lovin' soul. Needless to say, I really, really want to see them again. And I'd love to stand beneath them, with you. We'll try to keep our mouths shut.

Greater flamingos at rest, Strandfontein Wetlands.

Dassie Man, Hermanus. He's feeding the hyraxes (hyraces?) while southern right whales spout just offshore. Amazing place, whale watching from land!!  I'll know better than to try to strike up a conversation this time.

Pickin' up an Angulate Tortoise and carryin' him across, West Coast National Park. A

 Zick's gotta do what a Zick's gotta do.

One o' them dassies, contemplating his sirenian/elephant ancestry. Or just digesting.

More proteas. This time with southern double-collared sunbird, Kierstenbosch Botanical Garden. 

Waterhole action at Kruger Park. It's a different aspect, over to the east in Kruger, a bit sere and dry. But there are animals. Animals of your dreams. Birds, too. We look at them all.

I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime. But then I never thought I'd see any of this. 

Grateful. And I really want to go again, and take a small group along. We still have a few spaces, and we need to finalize so we don't lose our accomodations. I'm sorry to push. Life's going by faster than I can run right now.

Want to come along? The trip runs from Aug. 24-Sept. 9 2016. It's a small, artisan trip, one safari vehicle. We'll have Kim Wright along to help us with the nutso botany on the Cape portion, and my great pal Leon Marais for the Kruger section. It will be choice!

Click HERE for more information. 

If you have any trouble getting through, just email debbieATholbrooktravelDOTcom

A little code there, to foil roving spambots. Substitute@ and . for the all-caps words and you're good to go.

And thank you. Back to the race!

The Dassie Man

It was only right, in a place as magical as Hermanus, South Africa, that something strange and wonderful should happen.  After all, there were ice plants glowing magenta, surf crashing, and southern right whales lolling peacefully just offshore. Any place you can watch whales from solid ground is a very special place.

 There were turrets and fairy castles of stone making a city for hyraxes.

Hold that pose, little one. It's the perfect postcard. This shot made me laugh, reminded me of the rock squirrel who welcomed me to the Grand Canyon last July. 

Same concept, different continent and order of animal...

And the hyraxes, or dassies as they're called, scampered back and forth between grazing grounds and rock fastnesses, making tourists pause and smile.

Yes, there was magic on the salty breeze.

I'd never seen a hyrax before this trip, but it was my first to the Cape Region. Taxonomists don't really know what to do with this little package of weird. By its dentition and skeletal structure, we've figured out that its closest living relatives are elephants and manatees. That alone is enough to fold me in a pretzel upon first seeing one. And the rock hyrax more than lived up to its advance billing. 

Put a trunk on him. Or flippers. Just imagine. Look how he's grazed the crap out of everything that isn't taken over by ice plant. It looks like he got a bit of leaf, ptoo!! Ice plant tastes pretty bitter, being a halophilic, or salt-loving, plant. There. There's your botany nerd Word of the Day.

So I'm watching the hyraxes when this colorfully dressed man picks his way out into the city of dassies. I'm taken by how wonderful he looks in his bright colors in that surreal landscape when he 

pulls out a bag of carrots and sits down on the rock next to the communal dassie latrine. All that pale tan stuff is dassie pellets. Yow.

 The dassies know him, and it's clear they are happy to see him.

Before long he has a good crowd. He's calling them kind of the way you'd call chickens, with a repetitive sound. The dassies are scampering from all over their little rock metropolis. For some reason he's tossing the carrots right into the latrine. Not something I would do, but the dung being sun-dried, perhaps it's innocuous. The dassies look fat and healthy, and they're herbivores, after all...their droppings aren't so noxious.

I am consumed with curiosity about this man, and his relationship with the hyraxes. I consider for a long time whether to approach him. I want the story so badly...how long has he been feeding them? Does he know them individually? Does he come here every day?  How come you throw the carrots right in their poop? I can't help it...I always want more story.

So I climb down until I'm within earshot and do the old super-awkward,  hesitant, "Excuse me, sir. May I ask you a question?"

And get no response. Hmm. Maybe he doesn't hear well. I try again, a bit louder. Awkward!

Still no response. He doesn't even register being spoken to.

At this point I have to consider three distinct possibilities.

1. He's deaf.

2. He speaks only Afrikaans and doesn't want to engage me in English.

3. This is his church, and he's just here to commune with animals. He doesn't come here to talk to curious tourists.

I know when to fold 'em. I shut the hell up, back off, and capture one of my favorite images of the whole trip. 

Just a guy and his friends. Perhaps his best friends. It's not mine to know. At peace, in this magical place of turrets,  real-life gnomes, and landgoing manatees. 

                      And who am I to disturb this communion of souls? Leave him alone, Zick. 
                                                               Leave room for mystery.

I'm going back to South Africa in September 2016. Wanna come along? Click here for details.

South Africa Overdrive!

Under the heading of: It's All Good, there has been a lot of interest in my South Africa trip 

September 25-October 07, 2016 

with optional pre-extension Sept 17-26 to the fabulously diverse Cape Region.

Red-billed oxpecker on impala 

So much so, that we are considering adding another vehicle, which would open up another five spots, for a total of 12 participants on the trip.

Thing is, we don't want to add another vehicle unless we get at least two more people to sign up.

Once you start looking at African safaris, it's hard to beat the price of this one. And I can brag a little and say that between Leon Marais, our flint-eyed guide, and the ever-curious and always engaged Science Chimp, we won't miss much, from the python on the limb to the leopard in the grass to the kite circling high overhead.

Thick-billed weaver, making a masterpiece with nothing but his mouth and feet. You try doing that.

Click this link for the Holbrook page. There you can download a PDF of the itinerary, get all your questions answered, and most importantly, sign yourself up for the adventure of a lifetime.

 Respond at the Holbrook page by 

Monday, June 1, 2015

 to secure your place on this incredible journey with me.

Yellow-rumped tinkerbird (a kind of barbet, or small toucan), with spiderweb. I was whistling to him and he was talking back. We had a moment.

Giraffe and kudu. I would like to see this with you.

Thank you for your interest. 

All photos by Zick.

Promise this is the last teaser/torture I'll do.

Zick In Africa! Wanna Come Along?

  Zick's going to South Africa in September!

The trip runs from September 25-Oct. 7, 2015, with an optional pre-extension September 17-25 to South Africa's fabulous Cape region for penguins and killer botanizing. 

Everybody's gabbling about it!

Wild helmeted guinefowl 

There will be very large, dangerous mammals, safely viewed via open Land Rover

Cape buffalo. Peter Lawson says they look at you like you owe them money.

and there will be birds, birds, birds! Some of them on large mammals, some not.

Red-billed oxpecker on giraffe

There will be small, colorful birds

Red bishop, taking nest weaving material

many small drab uncolorful birds for the more avid amongst us

 Sabota lark

and lots of large breathtaking birds

Martial eagle

including the heaviest flying bird on the planet

Kori bustard, which, at almost 40 pounds, takes quite a runway to become airborne.

Jackal buzzard, the Dark Continent's redtail.

There will be many squeeworthy moments.

Vervet monkey baby, gettin' all Science Chimpy back at me

And who better to experience them with than the Science Chimp herself?

Red-billed oxpecker fledgling, being fed by a parent on its movable feast. What you can't hear in this tranquil photo is me, firing questions at our incomparable South African guide Leon Marais, about where oxpeckers nest (tree cavities) and how in the world they manage to settle down long enough to lay eggs and raise a brood while their food source walks hundreds of miles away. Ahh, South Africa. You are a treasure box of beauty and inquiry.

Here's our man on the ground, Leon Marais of Lawson's Nature Tours, with killer guide Mana N'tuli. You will be in the best and most knowledgeable hands. I'm there for color and comic relief. 

You've read this blog long enough to know that we're going to get just as excited about dung beetles and tortoises as we are elephants and marabous. Bring your long lens, your curiosity, your cool khaki field clothes, and your eyes and curious minds. I'd love to spend some time with you discovering the amazing wildlife, varied landscapes and splendor of South Africa!

September 25-October 7, with optional pre-extension to the Cape region Sept. 17-25

Hate to be pushy, but I've been so busy with book finishing (almost there!) and spring stuff (see prior posts) that I've let publicizing this trip go too long. If you're interested, by all means save your space by signing up soon, or at least checking in with Holbrook at the link below.

Click here for a full description of the trip, including itinerary, pricing and more photos!

What IS a "Fam Trip," anyway?

Zick laying hands on a very large, very old female black caiman in Guyana.

Chimping all the way out.

Photo by Erica Geis

I've been working for weeks now, sorting, editing, cropping and weeding photos taken on my South African safari in February, 2012. It's been at the top of my to-do list since then. I knew, looking at my spring and summer travel schedule, that it would be gruesome, but I didn't think it would take me until August to have the time and mental space to sit down and do the work of processing a ten-day trip. As a visual learner, I'd be absolutely lost without my Canon 7D camera and the souvenir photos I take. When I finally sit down to write the article, I have my field notebook, a stack of field guides, my itinerary, and the photos right in front of me. Then comes the painstaking work of reconstructing the trip. It's amazing how much I forget when I'm staying in a different place every night and have no down time whatsoever to digest it all.

See, I get these press familiarization trips (also known as fam trips) over the transom every few years. My last one to South Africa was in 1994, so maybe I should revise that to "every few decades." At first blush, they look like all-expense paid vacations to places I could never afford to go. And they are, sort of, and they're great, they're terrific. But they're almost always on very short notice (Can you go to Africa in three weeks?) ; you usually have to convey yourself to either New York or Miami to depart, which involves air fares, parking and hotels, and usually  inoculations and necessary but costly gear upgrades, all on your own nickel. My "free" trip to Guyana cost me a bit over $1,000 in such expenses. I had a fabulous trip, and I thanked the Guyana Tourism Authority by writing an article for Bird Watcher's Digest and posting 64 substantial blogposts about everything from Marmite and crab-eating raccoons to colonial spiders in quilt-sized webs to catching and sexing giant caimans at night.  

Mike Weedon standing next to a communal spider web on Turtle Mountain, Guyana, with thousands of seething spiders inside. Eee! Eee! Eee!

I'd also add that fam trips are something else, but they're not a vacation. The whole point of a vacation is to let your brain go wherever it wants to while you do stuff that you like to do, or maybe nothing at all. On a fam trip, you're being rapidly scuttled from one place to the next so you see the most in the shortest possible time. Fam trips often involve all-day bus rides, short flights, and several transfers in a single day. I'm scrambling the whole time, jotting notes about birds and plants and insects and geography; getting weird place names spelled right; getting contact information on lodgings, making notes about the culture and the food, taking photos every few seconds. Firing on all cylinders from dawn to the moment I collapse into bed, to rise again in the dark and have another day.

A Guyanan crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus) raiding the power bar stash in my suitcase. Ack!! Ack!! Eee! Eeee!

I am not complaining. I'm just 'splaining, for those who are tempted to think I am nothing but lucky for getting to go on fam trips. Well, I am very lucky. But I am not being asked to go on these things because I'm lucky or particularly cute or highly enthusiastic in a Science Chimpy way. Tourism departments ask me because I work like an organ grinder's monkey to deliver the payback they're looking for, which is articles in Bird Watcher's Digest and blogposts right here. The beauty of blogging about it all is that the information remains online indefinitely, and anyone searching "South Africa birding" can come across these posts. And that makes me very happy, because South Africa's wildlife reserves are like a great big gift to the planet, and I love to share gifts.

So with that as a preamble, I'll kick off a series on my February 2012 trip to South Africa. You're going to like it.

Speaking of "like," thank you, dear readers, for your magnificent response to my last post, "Me, You and BWD." Subscribing to Bird Watcher's Digest, either digitally or in print, is a resounding vote of support for a family-owned and published magazine that, after 34 years, continues to give you the best that it's got. A Zick magnum opus on South African birding is coming up in its pages, with the endless photo salon (I picked 715 that were worth looking at) and my usual loose and jittery commentary appearing here on the blog.