Page 26 - Dainfern Precinct Living 4 2021

NATURE

DIKKOPS, HADEDAS

AND THEIR BABIES

BY JAMES CLARKE, PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARY BROADLEY
I wondered. Even the old paperbark

had never appreciated the
singular habits of the spotted
tree in front of my house was
thick-knee – or the spotted
sprouting new leaves in mid-April.
dikkop as I prefer to call it –
until I saw one at the end of
March this year, sitting as still
the male kept vigilance two or three
as a statue at the base of a tree. While the female sat perfectly still,
metres away – also as still as a
We were on our daily dawn walk statue. We saw them daily and
when we noticed it in the middle of neither bird was disturbed by our
somebody’s driveway. presence or by Mary trying to adjust
her camera to compensate for the
It sat there day after day. We never birds’ ultracryptic colouring which, in
saw it move but guessed it was a certain light, renders them very hard
female sitting on eggs. They usually to see.
lay two of them.
They were neither fazed when
The dikkop in Gauteng typically people walked past with dogs – nor
starts breeding in early spring, by the presence of at least three
peaking in November, and quits cats living close by. Even a heavy
around Christmas so why was this truck passing, noisily, three metres
one three months late? Why was away failed to cause them to blink.
it rearing newly-hatched chicks in
April when cold weather is about to After three or four days, we saw the
start? chicks. Their camouflage was so
brilliant, they were barely visible as
Fortunately, the weather was like they nestled down in a flower bed
summer. Global warming? We next to mum who eventually tucked
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