Page 16 - The Villager December 2020

Humour

ha-ha-hadeda

By JAMES CLARKE

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

has become a characteristic of life in
Gauteng’s suburbia – like crime and
deep holes in the road.

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

14 • Issue 12 2020 • The Villager