April 25, 2018

Birding on the Chobe River

Birding on the Chobe floodplains is like falling into a big bowl of ice-cream, without the negative side effects of eating too much of it. Being a boatman for a bird watcher or bird photographer must be exhausting. Stopping every few metres for yet another bird. Imagine how tiring it must be for the photographer!
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July 13, 2018

Starlings not that Common

If there were a lion behind every second bush, or a leopard in every tree, would they be so special? Would photographers want to shoot them (to protect them), would photographers drive off-road or into a no-entry road to get a better angle on their million dollar picture? I have in fact seen people drive all over each other to get a closer look at a lion, to get to the front of the scene of the crime. Imagine, for a lion! Luckily no photographer will ever do that. The point I want to make about starlings is that they are too common. Most of the starlings have a metallic sheen flashing back when the sun touches their feathers, but unfortunately they are not so special because they are just too common. This might be where this terrible word is coming from: ‘common’, like too many seen too often. Possibly it is also because they are robust and gregarious. Let’s rather call them plebeian.
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September 16, 2018

Chasing the Rain to the Nyae Nyae Pans

The Nyae Nyae Pans in the east of Namibia were filled up after good autumn rains. Stories abounded of lions that roamed the open grasslands. Of a massive flock of flamingos that had descended on the water. One word: paradise.
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September 20, 2018

Birding for Beginners

Arriving in Namibia many moons ago as a free man, not on any anti-depressants but with lots of hair and muscles, weekends were open for enjoyment. As a novice birder (2 months), I decided that Etosha should be the first place to conquer with my new-found knowledge and enthusiasm for the world of birds. Since I had been in the country for just one month there were a few birds to discover, over 600 to be more precise. Without wanting to bore the reader with the "wel en weë van (ups and downs of) die blou bul birder" this might be of real importance to any novice Namibian and birder.
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March 5, 2019

Birding with Pompie: Carmines and the art of being a novice bird guide

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Text and Photographs Pompie Burger [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I have changed my opinion on tour guides and engaged people, and have myself become a very sympathetic tour guide and […]
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August 27, 2019

How to Start Birding

If this story will not motivate you to start birding you can just as well die and never be able to enjoy life to its fullest. If you are an anti-social animal, birding is for you. If you are a party animal and crowd pleaser you will even like it that much more, entertaining your guest with another wonderful sighting of your first 50 birds (mossies?).
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January 8, 2020

Riverboat Birding

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Text and Photographs Pompie Burger [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] As if game drives in a vehicle aren’t bad enough, someone has invented boat trips. The worst part of […]
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March 10, 2021

The life of birds in trees

It might sound like a bit of a cliché to mention the importance of trees for birds and vice versa, although there are unfortunately people who still cannot see that importance, and probably not the importance of trees for humans either – so how in hell would they ever see the importance of trees at all.
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October 29, 2021

Birds of smoke and fire

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text] They taught us the speed of light, but they never taught us the speed of darkness. – Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Fire […]
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November 1, 2021

Birding with Pompie: Slowness

Namibia is a large country, size does indeed matter, so driving and being on the road will be part and parcel of travelling (and bird watching) in this vast and beautiful country. To get to the different hotspots for birding you need to do the travel thing (remember slowness), be it by car, boat or on foot, although I must confess Namibians are not known for the foot thing.
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November 1, 2021

Living in the land of sand and freedom: Driving on empty

One of our favourite activities every year is the annual vulture tagging. We have been participating since 2016, at which point one child was two and the other five. The first time we joined this outing we hadn’t yet met everyone involved, but had made telephonic arrangements to meet the team at Sesriem.
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December 1, 2021

Birding with Pompie: What’s in a name

I think the only bird which has been named and featured in a movie is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Bird on a wire by Leonard Cohen is the song most covered by other artists – about 400 different artists, I think. If this is because it is such a beautiful song or if it is about the bird I do not know. What is important is that I do not know what bird it was, but I think it has been sitting on the same wire for the last 50 years.
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