• 

• 

Since its first appearance in 1993, the SASOL Birds of Southern Africa has gained a reputation as one of South Africa’s best bird books, unsurpassed for its excellence as an all-round guide to identification. To my mind, its illustrations, which have been stripped down to exclude extraneous and distracting features of animation and context, are the most accurate and revealing of the current crop of field guides.

The revised 5^th Edition edition, contains some real advances on its predecessors in the series. Probably the most novel of these is the inclusion a “bird call” feature which enables you to access calls by scanning barcodes with a free downloadable call app. It also contains calendar bars depicting species’ occurrence and breeding periods.

Very much a team effort, the book now has six contributing authors with new input from Dominic Rollinson and Niall Perrins, both well-known for their birding expertise. In addition to this, it has more than 800 new illustrations, including all-new plates for raptors and seabirds

As one would expect of a field guide of this sort the accompanying text has been simplified and limited to the essential differentia but should be more than enough to help with immediate bird identification. For the full treatment you can always turn to the comprehensive reference work, Roberts Birds of South Africa.

If you want to plunge even deeper in to the subject of bird identification, than Birds of Southern Africa and their Tracks & Signs by Lee Gutteridge might be another worthwhile addition to your birding library.

Normally when one attempts to identify a bird in the field one starts with its physical appearance – its size, shape, patterning and colour. One also looks at their movement – how they hop, run or jump on the ground; how they move through bushes and trees; how they fly in the air; how they swim or dive in the water.

This book approaches the subject from a slightly different perspective, one that doesn’t even require the bird to be present – by teaching you to identify its spoor or tracks and its dropping, as well as picking up other little tell-tale signs.

It is a slightly unusual approach, granted, but it is yet another way of celebrating bird diversity and of expanding our own range of experience of the natural world.

Adding to its appeal, the book is handsomely produced with a bibliography and index, plus hundreds of colour illustrations depicting not only the spoor and droppings but the birds themselves.

With the world in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic hysteria and the economic climate as gloomy as the burning Msunduzi landfill site, getting out in to the country is the one thing we can still do which makes everything seem all right again. It is like a passport to a more ordered and contented world.

And perhaps no other creature better exemplifies this reassuring image of bucolic calmness than the humble butterfly.

I love birds, always have, but it is only since I moved up to the Karkloof area that I have begun to develop a deeper interest in these delicate but wonderfully self-contained insects, perhaps because there are so many of them active in our area at the moment, feeding on the spring and summer wild flowers. The more you watch and get to understand them the more wonderful they get.

South Africa is, indeed, singularly lucky in having over 671 species of butterfly which, as Steve Woodhall, the author of Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa, points out, is an impressive number for a country outside the Tropics.

Anyone who, like me, wants to be able to identify and know more about them would do well to keep his handy field guide in close reach for it is a treasure trove of useful information.

First published in 2005 it has been fully revised and updated to reflect the most recent taxonomic changes. Taking full advantage of the rise in the use and quality of digital cameras, the book is also stuffed fill of beautiful images of butterflies in all their colourful variety.

For this edition a full two-thirds of the images have been replaced with new material showing both male and female forms – where they differ – as well as upper and undersides. The species accounts have also been comprehensively updated and expanded, covering identification, habits, flight periods, broods, typical habitat, distribution and larval food sources.

Like all the best field guides it is a book which inspires adventure, improvisation and the learning that comes from discovery. Since getting my copy I have managed to photograph and identify the Southern Gaudy Commodore, the African Blue Pansy, the Yellow Pansy, the Common Diadem, the Painted Lady, the Forest Swallowtail and the Green-banded Swallowtail.

Rife with similarly enticing names, Woodhall’s well organised guide brings home just how astonishingly refined and varied these creatures are. Hopefully it will, in this time of self-isolation and rampant gloom, reignite your own desire to escape in to the wild…