Part 2: Birding – An Extreme Sport?

This is the part 2 of the article, 'Birding - An Extreme Sport'. Read part 1 here

But let’s move on to snakes. Not once, but twice in recent years, when drawn to photograph some very vocal and varied forest birds around shrubbery that weren’t, for once, trying to fly off, even when I advanced, I discovered a Green Mamba on the very same shrub – obviously the cause of the birds’ distress.

Green Mamba - Photographed by Tyron Dall

A nasty Boomslang was in the “Outdoor classroom” on the way to the famous suspension bridges of Storms River mouth. Not a topic I was keen to study.

On another occasion, at Silaka on the Wild Coast, we were entranced by the way Lesser Masked Weavers were protecting their nests against a Black Mamba trying to enter their tubular entrances, mere meters from our chalet.

Cobras seem to pop up mighty regularly when out birding. One being a particularly poisonous monster of a 1,8 m Snouted Cobra on the Magalies mountain, when birding with two other ladies from our bird club to whom I wanted to show the riches of my home pentad. Unexpected riches, indeed, right in suburban Pretoria!

A Mozambique Spitting cobra stormed past us at our accommodation at Zaagkuildrift as we were loading the cars prior to departure. Luckily, it had a bullfrog in its fangs and wasn’t much interested in us.

St. Lucia delivered a Forest Cobra at the entrance to the famous boardwalk, town side. I never knew there were so many species of Cobra, but much to my disinclination, I’m bound to find out – maybe because I keep photographing them when I encounter them. Add to snake species that fat Puffadder sunning itself on the steps to the ladies’ ablution block at a game farm… I could go on and on.

But to find yourself in danger of both quicksand and crocodiles simultaneously, you should try birding St. Lucia’s estuary mouth. Recently, I was searching there for newly arrived migrant waders and checking the tern roost for the Eurasian Oystercatcher. The wind blew off my cap and it landed just half a meter from the edge right in the lagoon. I might just retrieve it. I gave a step forward into the shallow water, only to sink immediately up to my knees into sucking, greedy quicksand.

Eurasian Oystercatcher - Photographed by Tyron Dall

Instantly, images from childhood cowboy movies sprang to mind: quicksand victims slowly sinking up to their necks, and then gruesomely disappearing from sight beneath the mud. Luckily, I had lost my footing when the sand grabbed me and fell backwards on my backside, and my companion grabbed hold of my hands and helped to pull me out. Only then did I catch sight of the crocodiles sunning themselves just further along the bank on a sandspit, in the company of two hippo. That stopped our relieved laughter, there and then. We had no taste for further birding. Although, I did return a few days later and, being more prudent, stayed well clear of the lagoon edges. I found some wonderful waders, even Ruddy Turnstone, Whimbrel and Godwit.

Birding from the safety of a car often also falls within the boundaries of extreme sport. Even though fellow motorists or passengers are the ones often participating, much against their own desire. Most birders, and I admit to being guilty, are notorious for drifting out of their lanes or worse, sudden stops when spotting a rare bird, such as a pair of Pallid Harriers, in my case. Innocent non-birders often must recover birders’ vehicles stuck in mud in weird spots. The dubious excitement of sinking in mud up to the car’s axles is inescapably part of birding.

I actually christened some of these muddy episodes after the lifer bird that was pursued and found at the time: the Grey-headed Kingfisher episode when we got stuck in Mapungubwe, the White-backed Night Heron adventure at Mabusa (three female pensioners high on adrenalin and sheer determination can accomplish wonders to free a stuck car), the intense terror of the Rufous-eared Warbler in the Karoo. Believe me, you may accept those wild claims that the Karoo once used to be a lake where Dinosaurs frolicked. After a storm, most of the Karoo farm where we overnighted had turned into a lake.

Stupidly, I left our cabin at dawn and went to look for the special Korhaans and Coursers as I had planned and anticipated months before. I laboured under the misconception that the car in high range with diff lock would prevent the horror that followed. Very soon, the sodden track became a nightmare of clay and mud, the car slipping and sliding and almost sinking.

I eventually managed, on the wings of desperate prayers, to wrestle the car out of the worst of it, and drove back through the veld, next to that nightmarish road. The car, from the roof down to the wheels, was entirely covered in clods of mud, much like those of rally drivers in very wet conditions. This earned the dubious praise of the proprietor: “you must be an excellent driver; we have pulled countless huge 4x4 vehicles out there with the tractor when it is as wet as this.” I trembled for hours afterward.

And, still on the topic of birding as extreme sport, the Drakensberg Rock-Jumper expedition also extracted raw fear when rain and mist enveloped us when going down Naude’s Neck Pass. We discovered during that slippery, agonising descent that phrases such as ‘cliff-hanger,’ ‘on the edge of your seat’ and ‘clenched jaws’ are not merely examples of figurative speech.

But don’t forget that hypothermia or extreme heat may also do you in. Birders tend to overlook that… When you camp in Punda Maria in November to see the Pennant-winged Nightjar, daytime temperatures reach 43° or higher daily. Club camp members experienced that when birding in the Makuleke Concession of Northern Kruger, temperatures went up to 45°+. Birding drives are undertaken on open game vehicles, not in air-conditioned SUVs. On top of that, elephants stroll through the camp daily.

The opposite of heat, hypothermia, is just as dangerous. But all I can think about is how, on the coldest day of winter, also at a minus 6° dawn, we stood, bemusedly watching the utter wonder of Grass Owl hunting near Suikerbosrand, frozen fingers, streaming noses and eyes forgotten… because we had found exhilaration.

And exhilaration will find you, no matter what extremities, or dangers, you may face in pursuit of our sport: birding.