Tablemountain

This ruined cottage was an irresistible moonlight attraction when we were teenagers. And the wall was a seat where we could climb up and pretend we were vampires.

The pines have their own charms though. When you’re raised on European culture and JRR Tolkien - and our spectacular African scenery is just the backdrop to life - it was easy to romanticise this slightly exotic landscape. But it doesn’t really belong here and as such it lacks the intense diversity of our native biomes. The one upside though is that it provides a living for fungi from Europe which extrude bizarre fruits out of the ground and bark after rains.

The native forests of Table Mountain. Dense and ringing with the calls of forest birds - unlike the bare alien pine forests that still linger on some slopes.

My camera battery charger has been rediscovered. So I took it for a long walk in the woods on the mountainside this morning. It’s really striking how many more birds you hear when you leave the alien pines and enter the indigenous forest. Now that I recognise the eerie, jaunty call of the Sombre Bulbul, I can hear that the forest is lousy with them. I also spotted a Cape Batis.

We were in Walmer Estate yesterday to pick something up. It’s such an attractive neighbourhood - #notaninvitationtogentrifyit This hair-dresser, corner store is a reminder of the vanishing corner stores that used to be ubiquitous in Cape Town. We call them Cafés for some reason - although we often pronounce it ‘Kaif.’ I have no idea why. You couldn’t buy coffee in them usually when they were everywhere when I was a kid. This hairdresser has supplemented its advertising with a graffito of a very strangely proportioned young man.

Another dawn by the Black River, looking to the confluence where the Liesbeek joins it. I’m still waiting for my new lenses because Fedex is a garbage company. Hopefully soon though. If I’d had the wide lens I could have included the full rainbow that went along with this scene.

No otters down by the river. But great flights of ibis - including two flocks of Glossy Ibis; about a dozen each. Might be getting new lenses for the little XE1 today. Excited about that.

I’ve joined a tiny bird group to monitor the presence of birds where the Liesbeek River meets the Black River. Once a week we go out to this spot on the Black River in the morning and spend 5 minutes noting every species we can see and their numbers. Yesterday was a two kingfisher day with a trio of Pied Kingfishers fussing just on the right edge of the Liesbeek mouth and a Malachite Kingfisher I didn’t see (I was taking notes and, when I thought I saw it later, was asked if I wasn’t looking at a Morning Glory flower - I was 😂). Despite being an urban river system, it’s bursting with wildlife. ...

A boat heading into the sunset - a rather tedious metaphor for mortality.

I’m having one of my oldest and dearest friends, @furiousgreencloud, to stay. It’s always been too long. I’m having a knee issue so we took the cable car up and skulked among the fynbos on a beautiful windless evening atop the mountain.