Page 42 - Fourways Gardens December20

Humour

ha-ha-haDeDa

B y Ja M es c la R ke

The infernal, strident,
sleep-shattering call
of that pesky bird, the

hadeda, has become a
characteristic of life in
suburban Johannesburg -
like crime and deep holes
in the road.

Image by Darcy Rogers from Pixabay

f the hadeda’s racket were man-made, it There are times when I wonder if the hadeda The proliferation of exotic trees in
would surely be outlawed. From a technical is not being deliberately provocative. I recall urban areas has offered it new nesting
perspective it is well above the decibel a row of them sitting on next door’s roof and and roosting opportunities and, in the
Ilevel that the National Occupational Safety calling loudly at 4pm on an otherwise quiet evening, it never roosts until it has joined
Association would recommend even on a Sunday afternoon. At first, being a tolerant the gang for a final hideous sunset chorus.
panel beater’s shop floor. sort of person, I chuckled at the effrontery of
it. It really was over the top, even for hadedas. What can we do about it? There is an
This misbegotten bird awakens tens of It was the sort of racket you’d expect from option.
thousands every dawn. Which is fine I frustrated drunken soccer fans after their
suppose unless, say, you’d had a late night team had lost 10 - 0 at home. We will have to, en mass, evacuate
and wanted to sleep in a bit. Gauteng for a few years, allowing tall veld
Then suddenly my neighbour, the archetype grasses to take over and the ground to
I am not averse to be woken by birds – small of an unobtrusive, cultured suburban lady, harden. Tall trees will have to be chopped
singing birds. In fact it is just as pleasant as came out of her kitchen and shouted at the down.
being woken by soft music. But why can’t top of her lungs, “For Pete’s sake shutuppp!”
the hadeda be more sensitive? They flew off, jeering. Hadedas can be very But then (I hear you ask) where do we go?
derisive.
Until the sudden urban influx of Bostrychia We go west – west into the Great Karoo
hagedash (the formal name for the hadeda The hadeda is an urban squatter. In recent and to the Namib. Yet even there we
ibis) around the 1980s, it was the bulbul’s years it has hugely expanded its numbers in will not be assured of peace because,
ever-cheerful song that woke us in the summer rainfall areas such as the Highveld, according to the Atlas of Southern African
mornings, or the robin’s melodious voice especially in suburban areas. It’s not as if it Birds published by Birdlife South Africa,
whose singing could even lull us back to cannot find work in the rural areas where the hadeda is steadily moving into the
sleep if we so desired. it properly belongs. The influx came about arid west lured by irrigation schemes
because of the expansion of suburbia with and having learned to nest on telegraph
While most birds chirp merrily, the hadeda its watered gardens. They give the hadeda poles.
screams like an impatient witch shrieking the opportunity, all year round, to probe
for more eye of newt and tongue of bat. the Highveld’s now softer earth using its The poles will have to go to of course.
Its call is as divorced from bird song as tube-like bill for skewering earthworms and And the irrigation schemes.
a jackhammer’s rattle is divorced from insects. This is the only time it shuts up -
Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. when its bill is deep into the dirt. Or one could migrate, overseas.

Fourways Gardens • 40 • December 2020