It is the Thursday before Christmas. I am driving among the ancient rocks of the Nelspruit Batholith (a batholith, for those who have forgotten their school geography, is a large emplacement of igneous rock that forms deep in the earth’s crust) which contains some of the oldest magnetite- granite so far found.

There is something very consoling about this scenery. I feel a connection with it. As I drive fragments of my past come floating back to me. The countryside reminds me of the Matobo Hills, where I went to junior school, many years ago.

There is the same labyrinthine chaos of granite rocks, kopjes, domes and other formations, pushed out of the earth aeons ago. It is like suddenly finding myself in a parallel universe, an echo world.

The road in front of me is dry and dusty and deeply corrugated. The sky above is cloudless and a deep indigo blue. The road goes up, the road goes down, altering my perspective of the surrounding bush-covered hills.

When I stop and wind down my car window to look at a bird I am hit by a blast of furnace- like hot air. That, in itself, is hardly surprising. The temperature outside is hovering on the cusp of forty degrees and because of the high humidity there is nowhere for the sweat to evaporate. I am left trapped in an all-enclosing clamminess.

Because I am in one of my ’embrace the real Africa’ moods I stubbornly refuse to switch on the car’s air-conditioner.

The reason I am here is to visit my sister, Penny, who lives in a small Eco Estate, just off the Uitkyk Road, in the Crocodile Mountain Conservancy. Unlike so many other of the other fashionable “Eco-Estates”, this one feels like the real deal. There are only five houses in it. They are strategically placed to blend in to the terrain and create the illusion of untouched nature.

My sister’s house is at the very end of the road which leads, through a pole and thatch-covered gate, in to it. It sits, precariously, on top of a steep slope covered with trees, crammed together so closely they form an almost unbroken roof. The view from the house is wonderful. From the front verandah one looks down over a succession of valleys and stony, rolling hillsides.

Although well-wooded, most of the trees growing on these slopes shed their leaves in winter. The last time I visited they were still in the process of doing this which meant the hills were a carpet of colour, ranging from green to russet-red with varying shades of brown, grey, yellow, orange and ochre in between. It was the blending of these colours that give such depth and richness and texture to the countryside.

This time it it completely different. Good rains had fallen several weeks before. The trees have been quick to respond. Stretching as far as the eye can see, the hills are covered in an apparantly endless variety of tree species of every kind of green.

Immediately below the house the small, oddly-named, Tipperary River (anywhere less like Ireland I can hardly imagine) flows through a narrow gorge of polished rock, weaving its way around great boulders that have tumbled down from the cliffs; or slowing in to deeper green pools under grassy banks.

The vagaries of the weather create extremes. After heavy rains fall in the catchment area, there is the routine excitement of the brown, coffee-like swirl of flood water hurtling through the ravine. It is a wonderful sound to fall asleep to at night.

In winter, however, the river shrinks back to a trickle and then usually dries up altogether except for a few isolated pools that harbour fish with weavers’ nests in the reed beds growing alongside them.

On the other side of the river there is a small, private, nature reserve so there is still a fair amount of game about – kudu, bush-buck, water-buck, impala, wildebeest, baboon and even a few giraffe. The kudu, in particular, have become very tame and often come around to the house, wanting food in winter.

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This is python country as well. There are several monster ones living in the rock crevasses that line the bank of the river. Penny has seen one that measures between 4,5 and 5 metres.

It seems fated that my sister should find herself living in the company of these magnificent serpents. She is a Social Anthropologist and part of her PhD thesis was about the role snakes (and mermaids) play in accounts and narratives concerning water divinities in local African belief.

The African Rock Python features prominently in these.

In traditional Zulu society, for example, some are believed to possess both mystical and metamorphosing abilities. On occasion the ancestors come to visit houses in their form. Such snakes are seen as the amakhosi, the great ancestors; in this sense they are viewed as intermediaries of God.

The python (and reed-beds) also features in some Zulu origin myths.

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I have not seen the python myself but I did once come across the skin of one while climbing over some boulders near the Tipperary river. The ancient Greeks also regarded snakes as sacred; they saw this skin-shedding as symbolic of rebirth and renewal.

On my first morning I sit on the verandah of the guest cottage which juts out in to the canopy of tall trees. From the riverine forest below emanates a whole bouquet of birds-song. I catch the beautiful ‘whee-cheree, cheroo, cheree-cheroo…’ of the Black-crowned Tchagra, the piercing cry of the fish eagle, various other calls.

The odd thing is that it all coming from the same spot. It takes a lot of hunting but eventually – having resorted to a little vocal spishing – I manage to lure the sound imposter out of his hidey-holes deep inside a jungle of tangled creepers and bush. It a solitary White-browed Robin-Chat (formerly Heuglin’s Robin) spilling his soul in song.

Unlike my Cape Robins back home who have become very tame and friendly and take a keen interest in everything I do in my garden, he is very shy and secretive, and wary of human contact.

He makes up for this social rectitude in other ways. He is obviously a good listener and a quick learner. He is also a wonderful tune-smith and mimic, storing a way what he hears for future usage.

Each morning he takes all the sounds and songs he has memorised and starts practising and testing and rehearsing them until he comes up with a version he likes.

Once he has honed his repertoire to perfection he uses it to try to get the girl. If he feels a particular song is not working he will often switch tunes or find other ways to make it sufficiently sexy to send his intended in to a swoon.

Quite why he should feel the need to imitate all these other birds is a bit of a puzzle because his own natural call – a loud crescendo of repeated phrases – is one of the most beautiful and evocative in the whole of Southern Africa. I would list it very close to the top of my Ten Most Favourite Bird Calls.

The robin is invariably the first bird to start up each morning and the last one to finish off in the evening. Thereafter his duties are assumed by the nocturnal Freckled Nightjar whose distinctive, dog-like, ‘yip-yip!’ lacks the sheer complexity of the robin’s song but has its own peculiar magic. There is another nightjar who calls in the region and its song is as every bit as beautiful and as evocative as the White-browed Robin-Chat – the Fiery-necked Nightjar. In English its lyrics have been interpreted as “Good Lord Deliiiiiver Us” but that hardly does them justice.

For me its glorious, persistent melody swells the warm summer air and stands out above all. No other bird can match it for sheer haunting beauty, no other bird manages to capture the elusive spirit and feel of the starlit bush at night the way it does. Its call is a hymn, a love song to Africa.

They say that a bird in full song often experience those rewarding chemicals – dopamine and opioids. I don’t know how true that is but the nightjar’s music certainly triggers the same feeling of intense pleasure in me.

There are plenty of other birds about. I don’t even have to go far to see them. Sitting on my front verandah I pick up two specials – an Eastern Nicator foraging on the forest floor below me as I sit drinking my morning cup of tea and a Eurasian Honey Buzzard (the pale, female, form) who comes gliding down the valley and lands in a tall tree, sitting there for a sufficiently long time to allow us to make a proper identification. Then, just in case I didn’t get it right the first time, it flies back again a couple of hours later.

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None but a birder can understand the excitement I feel when we identify it.

The Honey Buzzard is a rare summer visitor who flies all the way to Central Africa from its breeding grounds in Central Europe. To get to our beautiful green valley it doesn’t rely, like us lazy humans do, on Google Earth or GPS but makes use of its hippocampus, that neuronal network that helps us orientate in space. It is like his mental map.

The first person to recognise it as a distinct species from the common buzzard was Francis Willughby who, along with his friend, Cambridge tutor John Ray, compiled the ground-breaking, monumental, encyclopaedia Ornithology in 1678.

‘ Honey Buzzard’ is probably one of the most inappropriate of all names because the bird does not, in fact, eat honey. Recent molecular studies also suggest that rather than being a close relative of the common buzzard it may be more closely related to some of the tropical kites.

At this time of the year there is plenty of food about for the birds. The Red Milkwood tree (Mimusops zeyheri) in front of the house is a magnet for them.

The beautiful green pigeon, in particular, loves to gorge on its fruit. So do the equally colourful Purple-crested Turacos. The sunbirds (mostly white-bellied and collared) enjoys its flowers.

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It is later in the day. The sun has gone. In the far distance storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. The frogs are in full voice. Grabbing our torches we head down to the darkening pool on the side of which Penny once saw a baby python and above which two nightjar are now hunting.

I love birds; always have but I don’t know much about frogs. Now is my chance to start learning. The young man I am going with is an expert on everything from frogs to Ferraris.

It is a strange experience to enter this dark reptilian underworld. It is like penetrating a highly secret society with its own peculiar set of arcane rites and rules.

The first one we see is the Red Toad, hopping purposely down the same path as us. Maybe he has come to escort us? I feel the excitement of Charles Darwin himself. It is like I am embarking on a momentous Voyage of Discovery.

There is a surprising variety of hawking insects and hunting spiders near or on the water surface or scurrying over the rocks – and, of course, toads and frogs. The noisy chap we heard from the house, whose decibel level is way over the limit, turns out to be the aptly named Raucous Toad.

Amongst the reeds on the edge of a pool we spot a real beauty – a tiny, bright, Painted Feed Frog with alternating green and white stripes running down its back. It looks like it had been fashioned out of glass.

A bit further on we discover two more amphibians. I feel a little embarrased because at first glance it appears we have caught them in flagrante delicto/captus amore faciendi.

It turns out they are not love-making at all but are two completely different species, the one piggy-backing on the other. The one on top is a Flat-backed Toad, the other possibly a Foam Nest Tree Frog. The expert is not sure. Quite what they are up to is anyone’s guess. Maybe it some sort of weird male domination thing. A froggy Donald Trump asserting his manly authority.

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We shine our head-torches in to a different pool. A small catfish rises up to the surface, followed, a few seconds later, by a much larger one. There is something a little alien, sinister and slippery about them; their skin looks ghostly and eerily translucent in the moonlight.

With their soulless, dead, eyes and cavernous, whiskered, mouths they don’t look like they have very much in the way of a conscience. I am glad I am not some small creature having to share the pool with them

It is a few nights later. A thin drizzle is falling. Much further down the valley, in Kanyamazame, it sounds like the Battle of the Somme is being fought all over again. In the huge township they are celebrating the arrival of a new decade – 2020.

I have other things on my mind. I am frogging again.

The rocks are wet and we have to tread cautiously to avoid slipping. I still manage to lose my footing and fall. I curse myself for having had the beer and two glasses of red wine beforehand.

On the rocks themselves there seems to be some sort of ‘greet-the -new decade’ frog orgy going on. Wherever we shine our torches there are copulating couples.

Oddly fascinated by all of this feverish froggy fornication on such a seminal calendar date, I snap away with my camera. Next we face the difficult challenge of identifying all the Romeos.

After consultation with a colleague, this is what the wildlife boffin decides the frogs (all of which occurred within a fifty metre radius of the deep pool) are:

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Even though I play no real part in the identification process, it is again absurdly exciting to have put a name to something. I especially like the one called the Snoring Puddle Frog. I suspect I may have been one in a previous life…

Back at the house I top up my glass with more red wine and drink a toast to one of the most pleasurable New Year’s nights I have ever had.

Who needs fireworks when you have frogs?

REFERENCES:

Messages from the Deep: Water Divinities, Dreams and Diviners in Southern Africa. PhD Thesis, Penelope Susan Bernard.

The Wonderful Mr Willughby by Tim Birkhead. Published by Bloomsbury Press.