Carol’s Column

Sunbeams of happiness – not only for pigeons

A small report in The Star on Monday caught my eye. England has major problems, and no, I'm not talking about that Major. It's their songbirds.

British songbirds are going tone deaf because of the constant roar of traffic. Traffic's loud decibels affect their hearing and the result is birds who sing discordantly.

What is worse is that this out-of-tune singing is affecting their breeding patterns as female birds only respond to certain tunes when their males are in mating mode.

Distraught blue tits, wrens, woodcocks and pheasants are so off-key that they can no longer attract mates.

The bottom line is that Britain's birdlife is diminishing and in the future, Brits may open their windows and no longer hear the happy tweeting of birds who, in their time, were cheery chirpers.

I wondered if South Africa was experiencing a similar phenomenon. According to birding experts, it seems not.

Although drought in the north has brought sightings of unusual birds in the Johannesburg area, our birds are hale and hearty and their vocal chords are going strong.

I can personally attest to this.

The Star offices in Johannesburg are situated, like most other offices in town, in an untreed, ugly, concrete environment.

We are opposite the Liberty Life building, and for a while I became terribly excited when I observed they were lifting the hideous concrete blocks surrounding their building.

A flower or six

Aha, at last they've realised the importance of greening, they’re going to make gardens, grow grass and shrubs, perhaps some trees and even a flower or six. I thought.

It was not to be. They are busy replacing the original hideous concrete blocks with equally hideous concrete blocks.

No green lung here. The only thing that remotely resembles a little bit of wildlife in this city, are the pigeons. C'mon all you cynics, you know the kind of wildlife I'm talking about.

But, to tell the truth, I've never seen such sad looking pigeons. They're scrawny and skinny. So, I popped out to buy some birdseed which I've been throwing out daily on to the ledge below my window.

Each day about 30 or 40 pigeons visit and there's nothing wrong with their vocal chords because if I'm late with their seed, they brrrr and sing with that melodious sound pigeons make.

It seems traffic, lack of greenery and even regular gunshots haven't affected them.

But what is sad is that so many of them are maimed. They have broken wings, pieces of string, wire or fishing line tied around their feet. And sometimes they have no feet at all, just stumpy knobbles on which they balance precariously.

The point of this is that it's obvious we breed more resilient birds than the British and furthermore, may they sing and spread their droppings all over Liberty Life’s ugly new concrete surrounds with vigour.

A quick PS. Yesterday was President Mandela's birthday. I wish him sunbeams of happiness and may he live to 120.

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