It's midday in the Bushveld, on a sweltering day in late November. Toast Coetzer is at the Pafuri picnic site in the Kruger National Park…
The loudest and most obvious part of the bush soundtrack is coming from a nearby branch, where a pair of pied kingfishers are nattering squeakily to each other. They dart back and forth from their perch in an ana tree overhanging the shallow water of the Luvuvhu River.
Joining the soundtrack: an occasional guttural uttering from a broad-billed roller - an ugly sound for such a pretty bird.
I pick out other birds: dark-capped bulbul, white-fronted bee-eater, and two tropical boubous singing a melancholy duet.
The tropical boubou is rare to see in South Africa and one of the reasons why birders love visiting the Pafuri picnic site in the far north of the Kruger Park.
High above, from the canopy of an apple-leaf tree (also called a rain tree) comes the soft buzzing of bees, flies and other insects. Soundless white butterflies zigzag erratically through the dappled airspace between a low fever-berry tree and the triple-storey nyala tree next to it.
Vervet monkeys patrol, eyeing every group of picnickers, hoping someone will let their guard down.
Five cars are parked at the picnic site. I'm on my own, but the other groups are mostly couples as far as I can surmise.
At a table to my left, a big Stanley flask stands proud and an elderly man drinks with satisfaction from its metal cup. Pafuri is happiness, his smile says.
At another table, I spy a jar of mayonnaise, a packet of rice cakes and an onion, sliced in two. A stealthy monkey grabs an onion half, having snuck up on the people from behind, taking advantage of their blind spot.
It lopes off athletically, mockingly, jumps into a tree and munches it like it's Grabouw's sweetest apple.
"That's why we keep this close," says the woman from the Stanley flask table, holding a long stick aloft to show to the mayonnaise table, who have accepted their loss graciously.
From my right comes the spicy smell of mopane wood being set alight. A newly arrived couple has wasted no time getting their braai fire started.
After admiring their handsome flames for a few moments, they stroll away, pick up two green plastic chairs and make themselves comfortable near the fire.
Beyond them stands the centrepiece of the picnic site, a type of lapa with a gas bottle and a fridge underneath. The stucture is missing its thatched roof and it's fenced off, indicating a construction area. The thatch should be replaced soon, one assumes.
A nyala ewe pokes her head above the riverbank about 10 metres away and then slowly comes into view, her perfectly placed hoofs marking a path she has probably walked a thousand times.
The Stanley couple has packed up, pausing on their way back to their Subaru to enquire about a bird call they've heard.
"Tropical boubou!" says Mandla Ngomane, site supervisor and Pafuri's resident bird expert.
The Subaru drives off with a gentle crunch of tyres on gravel, leaving my Mahindra Pik Up, a VW Amarok (with a GoPro mounted on its roof at the end of a metre-long pole), a VW Polo (the braai couple) and a newly arrived Toyota Land Cruiser.
The breeze picks up, riffling through my Roberts guide and turning the page from swifts to stints. A flurry of dried leaves from the nyala tree.
Mayonnaise man strolls to the edge of the riverbank, stalking a monkey.
Over my left shoulder, from the bush behind the bathrooms, two young nyala bulls have appeared, and then two more, and then an impala ram. Through a gap in the trees to my right, a patch of blue sky is suddenly filled with the shapes of four, six, eight - maybe more - white-backed vultures, circling hard and tight into a fast thermal. Rising, rising, and gone.
I stroll over to Mandla and buy a Fanta and a Sprite, R13 each, from his fridge. "Would you like to see a black-throated wattle-eye?" he asks. I've never even heard of such a thing, so I say yes.
We walk to the edge of the picnic site where an African mangosteen tree provides a dense, safe canopy for any bird wishing for a discreet nesting site.
Koos and Drienie van Rensburg from Centurion are also scanning the tree - the birding paparazzi are here! Mandla whips out a laser pointer from somewhere and soon I see the nest.
Suddenly the bird appears and my binoculars find it in the foliage. It's the female, a beautiful black-and-white bird with a red wattle above the eye.
It's an apparition, in this miracle place.
