Cliff Buchler (email)
Whether or not you believe the biblical version of the Garden of Eden, the idea of it conjures up a place of beauty overrun with flowers, trees, shrubs and bubbling brooks.
My neck of the woods is known as Eden and is part of the Garden Route, so calling it the Garden of Eden isn’t all that far fetched. OK, so here we don’t have a tree of knowledge, but we do have a well-run university and excellent schools taking care of the knowledge part. And our apples from Elgin, although tempting, don’t force you to make sticky choices.
But like the original, our garden ain’t perfect.
We have our share of crime, but thankfully a decent municipality and police force keep control.
So what is it that spoils our pristine environment?
The Bostrychia hagedas, an escapee from Jurassic Park. Its membranes nictitate evilly as it swallows a large insect or snail. It’s large, about 76cm long, and grey/brown in colour. The narrow white horizontal stripe across its cheeks looks like a moustache, although it doesn’t reach the mouth corners. A Hitler lookalike. Wings are powerful and broad, enabling quick take-offs.
An ugly bird commonly known as the hadeda.
Looks aside, I mean not too many of us are pen paintings, it’s his ear splitting call that makes him an unwelcome presence. And when there’s a whole gaggle, normal sounds are drowned – even those emanating from mowers or weed eaters.
And when mating, they take to the air, doing on-going fly-pasts with the distinctive haa-haa-de-dah reaching a glass shattering crescendo. If they were any nearer to earth they’d puncture eardrums.
What makes it all the more bothersome, they do their lovemaking at three in the morning. Can they not make it coincide with a human timetable when in all probability couples are doing it, making appropriate noises of their own without being bothered by the nettlesome haa-haa call.
It doesn’t end there. When foraging, the contact call is a low growl, similar to that made by a young puppy. When this happens our pups go bananas thinking there’s a chic on the lawn. It upsets them no end when discovering it’s the ugliest bird on the planet and not some sexy piece.
Like the alleged misbehaved couple in the original garden, the hadedas should be banished from ours.
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