take cover

You don’t have to be crazy, but it helps…

- VERNON RL HEAD

‘Camouflage’ is a useful word these days with all that’s going on in the world, especially for birders, although we never mention it. It’s a kind of unwritten rule, like don’t point or don’t scream your lungs out when you get a lifer.

I do scream my lungs out, though, every time.

In case I was missing something, I looked up camouflage on Google: ‘The disguising of military personnel, equipment and installations by painting or covering them to make them blend in with their surroundings.’ All very useful, but a bit over the top if you’re just going to watch wild birds in the park. The thing is, birders secretly love camou flage and although they froth at the mouth at the concept, it’s rather essential, like breathing. Yet the day before a trip you’ll never hear one say, ‘Don’t forget your camo gear.’

Let’s face it, does your two-metrelong, image-stabilised zoom lens really need to be wrapped in a puzzle of greens and browns as though you’ve just got back from the frontlines of Zaporizhzhia? And come to think of it, is the colour of the Kalahari honestly of any use when you’re out there on deck, below the drifting wings of albatrosses and other such quarry in the middle of a heaving pelagic frenzy? Rhetorical questions notwithstanding, such is the state of our relationship with all things leaf-like and soil-ish in the frantic quest for birds.

Take a step into the shadows, disappear for a while, watch inquiringly and learn.

I guess we are hunters at heart, poetic, bookish ones at any rate.