Number 4: Calling in a birding expert

Birding has many guises, leisurely from the window of our Loft apartment, watching the birds enjoying our fountain at home, birding opportunistically wherever we find ourselves, or, targeting specific birds in specific places. This tends to be about growing my local or global list, finding endemics, rarities, vagrants, whatever the purpose it tends to be 'hardcore' birding.

NUMBER FOUR:

Calling in a birding expert.

As my Southern African bird list creeps towards 800 species seen, a good milestone by SA standards, I have been keen to target some of the gaps on the list. I am a very average birder as I do not spend enough time in the field and also I do not have a good ear for remembering - or even hearing- bird calls. So I decided to ask Etienne Marias to guide Fred and me for a day to focus on some of the notoriously tricky larks and pipits found in greater Gauteng.

A day in the field, birding with Etienne Marais

I am auditing my list too and some of the birds I have recorded I need to resee to be happy with the identification.

Target bird - Bushveld Pipit

'Hardcore' means up and out the house by 3.30am to meet Etienne by 4am, birding at sunrise around the Mabusa Nature Reserve in Mpumalanga, on the move and in and out of the vehicle for a solid 14 hours, barest of facilities, brief picnics in the field, sunburn, thrashing through waist-high grasses to see if a Corn Crake will flush, traversing a rocky outcrop to try locate an elusive calling Shelley's Francolin, getting frustrating glimpses of a targeted pipit in the poor morning light, delighting in the vast swarms of queleas over the grasslands, excitement at Fred's photos of the targeted Bushveld Pipit, relief at getting the resee needed of the Icterine Warbler, the realisation of how little I really know about the wonder of our birdlife but still so pleased that despite the tiredness, the passion to be out birding is part of who we are.