Before I start on the Zambezi thing....I must rant.
The Rant:
This rant is against all birders. Now I'm sure they are fine, upstanding people who love their children and pay their taxes, but they have no business being on an extended trip with normal people. These are the kind of people who spend their days looking at birds they've already seen before or hunting around for birds they've never seen and then cross-referencing with The Bird Bible so they can smugly chalk up another sighting and let the world know about it...whether the world wants it or not.
"Oh look everyone, it's a speckle-backed African flatulence warbler. They're very rare. We have only seen it twice before (and smelled it once), so you should kiss our feet for pointing it out to you, you ornithologically-challenged ignorant masses!"
Bid deal; they can identify birds and happily live in their own little warbly world. But actually it's not that easy. It seems that in order to see a bird, and to "bird" properly, the entire safari vehicle must come to a grinding halt for several minutes while the birds are viewed. Now there are a lot of birds in Africa...about every 2 meters. At that rate, a 3 hour safari which would ordinarily allow normal people to see lions, elephants, leopards, etc, would have travelled about 20 meters before having to turn around to go home.
And this is only when they can identify the birds! When they can't, it somehow becomes the poor driver's responsibility - above and beyond making sure the vehicle isn't attacked by rhinos or the passengers carried off by crocodiles - to give the layman term for whatever the birder is pointing at in the distance. Now, to their credit, these drivers, who speak English usually as only their third or fourth language, manage to get it spot on everytime.
But the birders will not be seen to be one-upped in the grand art and science that is looking at birds though binoculars, oh no. If the driver answers, then there is some other question to be asked, as if to say, "I was only testing you with an easy one...now here comes the real question". And the real question is usually some thing like (and this is a true to life example):
"Now is that bird a brood parasite?"
What the hell? A brood parasite? I cold see the driver's brain trying to make a connection with the word "parasite" from some ancient biology class and "brood", as in "worry about something". I could also see the rest of the group look around in part embarrassment and part pure disbelief and rage. Just as the right amount of silence passes, the birder then says "that's when they steal other bird's nests". You could hear the dozens of virtual hands smacking the birder about the head at this moment.
Mind you, in all fairness, the birders sometimes also add a bit of levity to otherwise tense situations. In the accident involving The Truck, I told y'all about last time, our resident birder arrived on the scene as we all did. Amidst the gasps and questions we were all asking regarding about how such an event came about and whether the driver was OK (I forgot to mention that between the time of the accident and police arriving on the scene, thieves tried to make away with everything on the truck - including the tires - but were stopped by the driver who was hurt in the melee) she remarked "I think it's a fish eagle".
We were all dumbfounded. Maybe the shock and trauma of it all loosened the last few feathers in her head and she was no longer able to communicate in a non-bird related language.
What's a fish eagle?
The statue on top of the fountain...it's a fish eagle.
Stupid us...we were staring at that big truck partially submerged in the water instead!
OK...that rant was longer than I thought it would be. I'll really talk about the Zambezi next time. Promise.
