Bird colours
Stories from an exotic childhood
Hunting holds an irresistible attraction for many. As a boy growing up in East Africa, I was no different. I spent many days wandering our farm with an air rifle, a couple of dogs, and my brother. It was how I learned to watch the birds and other animals, to know their habits, and when and where they could be found. I learned to be quiet and patient in the bush, and to explore places that the animals went. It was a secret world that brought me closer to nature. Eventually it taught me a lesson that I have carried for the rest of my life. This is the story of that lesson.
I remember bird colours from Kenya, from the garden where hibiscus blooms hung red and pink, and the bougainvillea vines covered the arched trellises in enormous, riotous displays of orange, purple and maroon. Bird colours were flashes of iridescent light, caught in the corner of my eye, and wondered at. I would see a flutter of black wings, a flash of satin red, and then it would be gone, hidden behind the hibiscus. Or suddenly an iridescent green and blue bird would hover by the flowers, bight yellow-throated and tiny.
Sunbirds. Black with red throat. Green with yellow throat and blue sheen on the wings, alive and beautiful in flight. Or dead on the ground, with eyes eaten out by ants. Poor bird, poor colours.
Sometimes I killed them, to stop the movement. To get them in my hands? Bird feathers, silky in my fingers, each feather a marvel of fine texture, so delicate. and another colour: deep red, blood from a gaping beak, hot on my fingers. The rifle in my hands, spent pellet in the sunbird, colours flowing away with its life and blood.
I used to follow the birds all over the farm, through the garden and down the path towards the spring where our water was pumped. A young boy with a rifle, two dogs and often my younger brother. Away for hours in the bush, following birds to their secret places. To the big thorn tree by the spring where the yellow and black weaver birds made their nests. The nests hung like finely woven baskets at the tips of the branches with tunnel entrances hanging in mid-air. My brother or I would pull down the branches to feel in the nests for eggs. The birds, screaming at us. Flashes of yellow wings, black heads, an orange eye. Angry bird colours.
Occasionally I saw the gliding flight of bright red and blue wings, several birds together, giving a deep hoot-hoot-hooting song. Touracos — forest birds as big as two or three of the doves who sang their soft cooing songs in the shadows. My heart would race after the touraco and I would stalk them like an animal. We ate one once, plucked and roasted on a fire. My prize was so small, stripped of it’s colours. The feathers scattered around, red and blue and green, for the dogs to sniff. The meat was a morsel, leaving me feeling cheated. No more chase, no more flash or red and blue and green in flight, only sticky blood and ashes from the fire on my fingers. The rifle and pellets beside me, the cigarettes in my shirt pocket, the boy playing at being a man.
I remember now how how I came to really see bird colours, and leave behind the cold blue sheen of our rifle. It was two things, I don’t remember how close or far apart. The first was the finch. The finches came in big flocks to the chicken pen to eat the spilled grain. They were brown with either soft red or sky blue heads and breast. Quick, neat and tidy little birds, chirping. Too small to shoot. Then one day I was playing at shooting from the hip and aimed at a finch on a wire. I saw the bird’s head go one way and it’s body the other. I picked up the little brown body and hot, crimson blood covered my hand…
The final time was the hawk. It was in the tall gum trees down by the taro field. It was a big prize for a boy hunting. I aimed carefully and shot. I heard the pellet hit the bird. The hawk tried to fly off, but careened out of control to the ground. It’s wing was broken. My heart was pounding as I rushed to where it had landed. I searched for it with the rifle at the ready. When I found him, he was standing with one crooked wing and a furious, regal, staring look of defiance in his golden eyes. I knew then that I had to kill him and it wasn’t going to be easy. I aimed point blank and fired, but the hawk just gasped and screeched. It took six shots; shoot, reload, shoot, to kill him. By the time I finished I was shaking, the tears streaming down my face, and my whole body aching. I buried the hawk so my father would not find him, and took the rifle home.
After the rifle, bird colours became even more vivid to me, a secret world. The magic kept coming back to me. One morning is particularly vivid now. There was a time when we had a lot of rain, and the pasture at the bottom of the hill was flooded (across the bridge marking the edge of our farm). My father was driving us to school. We crossed the bridge in the car, and then we saw them. The pasture was full of storks. European storks like those I had seen in pictures of storks on the roofs of houses in Germany. They were standing in the water, maybe a hundred of them, maybe only fifty, but there large as life. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Great pure white birds with huge orange beaks and long legs, searching for food in the flood. It was a new bird colour, the image of wonder.
