Journey as Bird Lover

As mentioned in my introductory 'Welcome to my blog!' post - my 'Journey as Bird Lover' page features the origin story to my bird watching hobby as it is today. To start off my story, my hobby origins of course starts with my dad, who always had an impressive knowledge regarding the field of zoology which includes the subject of ornithology, botany, ecology, botany, herpetology and other related subjects.

However, our fascination of nature isn't just limited to the two of us, but also applies to the other members of our family both main and extended with varying degrees of interest.

Relating to me in particular, my bird knowledge relating to the birds of the bushveld was bolstered and expanded upon through the years by the non-stop rewatching of the Gibson's Birds of Southern Africa Vol. 1-3 VHS tape combined with the further application of the Roberts Multimedia Birds of Southern Africa CD-ROM (The most applied features were most likely the Bird ID Game and the Bird Pages) and Roberts' Bird Games CD (this one being a particular favourite) being played on a now extinct PC with a monstrous hard drive for hours on end in the upstairs study. Along with these bird aids, I admit I quite had a library of printed bird resources, mostly consisting of books such as the general bird guide materials along with general books with information about birds. Heck, at some point, I could mimic the calls of some of the common birds.

In addition, I recall rescuing some birds (unfortunately not successfully) such as a Crested Barbet and a young Laughing Dove.

However, unfortunately, as the years passed, my interests in birds waned - my passion for them had not disappeared completely, but the intensity had decreased to a level that I only held a general interest on the subject of birds due to effect of secondary and most of high school on my life. The only time I recall my interest in birds increasing were during the holiday times where we would almost always visit various conservation areas such as our game farm in the Free State Province along with various national parks and nature reserves, such as the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, Kruger National Park, Camdeboo National Park, Mokala National Park, Augrabies Falls National Park, Mapungubwe National Park, Mountain Zebra National Park, Ndumo Game Reserve, Tembe Elephant Parks and others. I still enjoyed nature documentaries about birds along with books about birds.

But fortunately my interest in birds increased again when I heard of a Bird Identification Course known as Flight for Birders hosted by Birdlife Overberg (thanks to my mother who found the advertisement pinned to the local library's notice board) and on completing the 2-day course, one receives a free one year membership to BirdLife Overberg and after that I started participating in various bird trips involving something known as the BIRP project created by the ADU at UCT. It was then I was introduced to potential birding hotspots within the area, and I made the decision to restart my bird life list from Jan 2015, with me benefiting from other members' bird knowledge; finding new places, with spots such as sewage works, De Mond Nature Reserve, Fernkloof Nature Reserve, Stanford, Agulhas National Park among others; and adding birds to my list that I never seen previously. It can be said that my Birdlife Overberg membership greatly benefited me, because it greatly improved my bird knowledge.

So, join a bird group. Believe me when I say that it is worth it when connecting with other individuals that enjoy birds just like you do. It will broaden your horizons!

My question today is what started your interest in birds? What's your story?

In the next segment, starts the bird hotspots section - so any suggestions?