Author: Hannelie de Klerk

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About Hannelie de Klerk

I am a Clinical Psychologist with an avid love of nature. I take photographs to remind myself to get out of my head and into the world. I run a Private Practice at 18 Versfeld Str in Yzerfontein. I can be contacted on +27828554874.

A chest full of white feathers

Wild, Wings, , , , View all 2 comments

The Burchell’s Coucal is a fierce and awesome bird. When this individual locked eyes with me in the Pilansberg I had the sense of a great personage looking down on my endeavours.

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The Burchell’s Coucal tends to skulk in the undergrowth and is a ground nester, so its call is known to more people than the bird itself. They live successfully in lush urban gardens where they will fiercely attack and eat anything from lizards to small birds, yet in turn they are hunted by our pets and even small sausage dogs have been known to terrorise them. They are happy close to water and are known as “Vleiloeries” in Afrikaans. When they are seen clearly perched in a high spot such as in these photographs, legend has it that rain is on the way, giving it the nickname of the Rainbird. Having such a strong energetic presence it is not surprising that they crop up in folklore and literature as well, one example being the poem “The Rainbird”, by Douglas Livingstone.

“The Rainbird” by Douglas Livingstone

One day you turned to me and said “goodbye”,

“we’re all washed up,” and “better we should part.”

Then as my spirit jerked and bobbed afloat

I drowned in unreality to lie

upon a muddy world that leaned awry

with bubbles, weed, old boots and fishy dart.

 

Then from this depth I stood, absurd, remote,

and drifted out.

Beneath a filmy sky

I paused to listen to my flustered heart

and heard instead the Rainbird’s liquid note.

I surfaced, walking with a firmer tread

and joined the Rainbird in his mournful art.

But as the cricket in his plastic coat,

I gaily chirruped how my love was dead.

Lighthouses

Sea, Views, Yzerfontein, Leave a comment
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I grew up in the small coastal town where there was a lighthouse at the end of the beach. Today, when a friend sent me a selfie from this beach with the lighthouse in the background it immediately felt like I was home. So many memories flooded in. As children we were taught to orient ourselves in terms of the lighthouse: “if you get lost go to the lighthouse and we will find you there,” would be a common refrain from a parent. After a day in the sun another parent would chirp that we should keep going, “the car is just the other side of the lighthouse”.  And it was while standing under that Umhlanga lighthouse during a weekend visit in June 2000 that I decided I needed to leave Gauteng and return to the sea. But this journey ended in a different town and a far off lighthouse calling to me. So tonight when I took my photograph to post it was of a lighthouse barely visible, marking the spot where Dassen Island lies on the horison.  But the sense of being guarded over, of having a beacon of light to turn to, remains the same. I am grateful for lighthouses.