Peacocks and Picathartes – Reflections on Africa’s Birdlife
Author: Rupert Watson
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Peacocks and Picathartes is an excellent read and highly informative for both the amateur and experienced birdwatcher. Its mix of quirky fact and anecdote maintains a light and often humorous touch, while imparting copious detail about 24 bird families, divided into those only resident in Africa and those mainly resident in Africa.
The author, Rupert Watson, is a long-time resident of Langata and frequently recounts stories about his expeditions around Kenya and Africa, seeking out unusual birds. Sometimes those expeditions lasted days and resulted in only a fleeting glimpse of the bird. In Ghana, he drove for a day and then walked for hours to reach the caves where he might see the rare White-necked Picathartes, a ground bird in the forests of West Africa. After a long wait, he saw two birds for five minutes. He was ecstatically happy.
In Congo, he was less fortunate. He travelled for days by plane and dugout canoe into central Congo looking for the Congo Peacock, but only managed to briefly hear its call in the forest at night. At the Kenya Coast, he went looking for the rare Clarke’s Weaver in the Dakatcha woodlands but completely failed to find it.
But the book is less about the rare birds of the title but more about the birds we regularly see in our daily lives (even if we do not realise it or recognise them). So, for those who live in Kenya, this book presents an opportunity to learn more about birds commonly seen.
For instance, the Speckled Mousebird, brown with a long tail, is commonly seen hopping around trees and shrubs in gardens and parks in Nairobi. Superficially undistinguished, they have many extraordinary features, such as outer toes that can face forward or backwards, allowing them to hang on branches like ‘gymnasts’. They also enjoy a vibrant social life, where they communally feed, roost and preen each other. Eating a lot of fruit (which can pass through their short intestines in 10 minutes), they do not drink much water but, when they do, they can suck and swallow water without raising their heads, like doves and pigeons, but unlike most birds.
Nairobi residents will also often see the Red-billed Firefinch, a tiny red bird, and the Village Indigobird, a small blue-black bird. But how many people realise that the Indigobird is ‘parasitic’? The Indigobird lays its eggs in the nests of the Firefinch, where its young chick will mimic the song of its foster parents and the gape of the other chicks to make certain it gets its share of regurgitated seeds.
The book is full of interesting and sometimes quirky detail: the Kori Bustard that you see in Kenyan parks is the world’s heaviest flying bird, weighing in at up to 18kg; the Honeyguide, also parasitic and raised in barbet nests, helps hunters find beehives because it likes to eat the leftover wax, not the honey; Oxpeckers often roost on their hosts, such as buffaloes; male Sandgrouse in northern Kenya soak their breast feathers in water to feed their young, often flying long distances to find pools in dry landscapes; the killer blow from a Secretary Bird’s foot takes 0.15 of a second and is equivalent to a 20kg hammer.
Watson also educates us about how birds think. There is a lot of evidence that birds can count. Egyptian Geese can match the number of chicks landing on the water with the number in the nest. And birds seem intelligent. For instance, the Verreaux's Eagle hunts rock hyraxes in pairs, with one acting as a decoy and the other seizing the prey.
The author also weaves into his narrative the personal stories of the early amateur scientists, who identified and classified the birds of Africa. Mainly Europeans in the pre-colonial and colonial period, they often went to extraordinary lengths to find unknown species; men like Levaillant, who arrived at the Cape in 1782, and Frederick Jackson, who came to Kenya with the Imperial British East Africa Company and became Governor of Uganda.
In conclusion, anyone interested in the birdlife around them will relish this fascinating book. It will both inform and entertain them.