EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS

Keith Barnes, co-author of the new Field Guide to Birds of Greater Southern Africa, chats about the long-neglected birding regions just north of the Kunene and Zambezi, getting back to watching birds and the vulture that changed his life.

- Keith Barnes

You say that people who are passionate about something have a ‘spark moment’. What was yours? 

My father was an avid birder. He had a strong desire to see a Bearded Vulture, so before a trip to the Drakensberg, I immersed myself in his bird books to learn as much as I could about it. Given its scarcity in the area, our chances of finding one were very slim. So we prepared ourselves for disappointment, but when a Bearded Vulture did fly over us, just 25 metres above my head, I felt like I was experiencing something magical. The adrenalin got me shaking and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Aside from being an author, you run Tropical Birding Tours to global destinations. How did that come about?

A geochemist friend who flitted around the world would e-mail images of birds to me from all over the place. Of course, it made me envious of his travels. I eventually joined him on a birding trip to Ecua dor, and a year later he was building Tandayapa Bird Lodge in the Andes.

He was pretty crazy but super creative, of the ‘build it and they will come’ type, but after six months it was still empty. While I was guiding around Cape Town, he and I chatted about starting an international birding tour company, in part to fill up the lodge. We had $20 000 dollars between us. Not much, but that became the seed money. We were living mostly on lentils for a long while afterwards, but it eventually took off!

What is your favourite birding destination in the greater southern African region?