We've talked a lot about field guides before - books that help you put a name to the different species, with a photo or an illustration, a distribution map and some useful diagnostic information. But once the birding bug has bitten badly, you'll progress to site guides. These books tell you where to go birding, and where to find specific targets.
As a kid, my favourite such book was called Go Birding in the Transvaal. (I'm giving away my age here.) Thanks to this book, my dad and I found ourselves in Bloemhof Dam Nature Reserve one cold spring morning. The book had promised all sorts of arid western specials: pygmy falcon, rufous-eared warbler, pririt batis, double-banded courser… and we'd found a good number of them. I was in heaven, but that all changed when we strolled along the muddy margin of a little pan.
Suddenly there was an explosion of screechy calls and a flutter of movement on the ground ahead. A small, grey-brown bird with two rings around it chest was badly hurt. The poor thing was crawling away from us, tail spread and down, flopping around and waving one wing and sometimes just collapsing as if utterly exhausted.
I was sure it had a broken wing and I wanted nothing more than to help it. However, every time we got close, it somehow scurried onwards. Eventually we had to return to the car, our spirits deflated.
The bird in question was a three-banded plover. Any inland waterbody, be it a puddle or a lake, will normally have a three-banded on patrol. You often hear their cries overhead as they fly around at night.
Plovers include some of our most common wader species: white-fronted plovers compete for space with sunbathers and sandcastle-builders all along our beaches; and when water levels fall, Kittlitz's plover can gather in such huge numbers that adjacent nests are only metres apart.
On the other hand, the plover family also includes some super rare vagrants. The Kentish plover, for example, is included in our books based on only one record: a desiccated corpse found along the Skeleton Coast in 1984.
Indeed, plovers are a diverse bunch, with residents, migrants, nomads, vagrants, socialites, loners, terrestrial species and semi-aquatic ones. There's even one that has adapted to life in hyper-saline salt pans - the chestnut-banded plover.
But it was only a few years later that I discovered another of their talents: deceit.
Only four of the ten southern African species of plover breed here; the remainder nest in cold northern latitudes during our winter. Doing the deed is quite an elaborate affair: The male approaches the crouched female, sometimes stroking her with his feet, and then jumps onto her back.
He might balance there for more than two minutes before biting her neck and copulating. Afterwards, he pulls them both backwards to tumble down and lie on their back with their legs in the air. Props to plovers for their foreplay, but not so much for the post-sex manners!
Plover nests are nothing to write home about - a simple circular depression that the bird forms by pushing its breast into the ground and rotating, while kicking sand outwards. Kittlitz's plover uses the reverse of this move to ingeniously hide its eggs when leaving the nest: By kicking sand inward, it buries its eggs in a matter of seconds, rendering them invisible.
The nest is typically placed near water, although three-banded plovers sometimes nest up to 500 m from the water's edge. The exact site they choose should offer good visibility for the vigilant parents, as well as small objects to break up the incubating bird's outline: pebbles, animal droppings, gravel, flamingo feathers…
The nest scrape is sparsely lined with small shells, fish bones, mud flakes and vegetation stubble. For additional camouflage, the eggs are liberally marked with scribbles, blotches or rings.
As with other waders, the chicks hatch at an advanced stage and leave the nest within hours. They are the cutest things you'll ever see: tiny fluffballs with oversized legs that scramble about as they follow their parents. If danger threatens, in the form of a gull, a dog or - you guessed it - a sympathetic young birder, the babies squat down and become nearly invisible.
Mom and Dad then play their deceitful trick: an elaborate performance during which they pretend to be injured. The idea is that a predator will be distracted and follow them away from the chicks.
I was certainly duped! But at least my memory of that day is no longer tinged with sadness.
