Sandgrouse in the Seventies
Africa’s most enigmatic gamebird
TO ME, THERE are few more stirring sounds in the African ve ld tha n the f ar-off call of a Namaqua sandgrouse reaching my ears long before the birds come into view over the distant horizon. This nigh-inaudible, three-noted dove-like coo holds the promise of the most exciting wing-shooting experience I have known. It is a sound so faint, initially, that unless you know it well, you won’t even hear it. When I lived in South West Africa (SWA) during the 1970s, my ears became so finely attuned to this sound that people accompanying me for the first time, when warned to get ready as the birds were on their way, refused to believe I could hear anything.
The first person I introduced to sandgrouse shooting was my brother-in-law, Mark Mayson, who was visiting from Rhodesia. I took him to the farm of my good friend Walter Kirsten, near Maltahöhe in the semi-desert southwestern region. Its dry riverbed had a dam which usually retained storm-water year-round. SWA had experienced three phenomenal rainy seasons in succession, and the sandgrouse populations were scarcely believable.
We sat near the dam early one August morning, waiting for the flights to start. Namaqua sandgrouse occur in pairs and small colonies spread out all over the dry veld – ground-dwellers. In the early mornings and late afternoons, it takes them a little while to congregate into huge flocks before flying anything up to
50km to water. I had told Mark he was in for the best wing-shooting he’d ever experienced, but coming from the dense Matabeleland bushveld, he took one look at the vast, arid plains surrounding us with nary a bird of any kind in sight and clearly disbelieved me. Leaning his gun against a bush, he lay out in the open, propped on one elbow, chewing a piece of grass while enjoying the early sun. I was under a low tree nearby.
After a while, my ears picked up that ever-so faint single call in the far distance and I said, “Get under cover, they’re coming.” Mark had heard nothing, and remained lazily recumbent, eyes half closed. Cynically, he said, “Well, I don’t think anything is going to come.” Minutes passed, and still he could not hear the remote single calls I was picking up. Then a couple of sandgrouse flew past in the distance, very high and fast, and kept going, followed by another two. “Reconnaissance flights,” I said. Unimpressed, Mark smirked, “Looked like doves to me.”
THEN WE BECAME aware of a strangely haunting tone, faint at first, growing steadily more voluminous. I felt my stomach go hollow at this familiar, eerie musical sound made up of hundreds of rapidly alternating high and low notes coming almost as one constant tone which I always find wildly exciting. This was the sound of a large flock of Namaqua sandgrouse all calling in unison as they approached water. Mark frowned and cocked his head, not recognising the din. In the next instant, the sky immediately above us exploded into masses of fast flying birds, swooping low and jinking all around us like a kaleidoscope, all calling in concert, “Kelkiewyn… kelkiewyn… ”. I selected a bird and fired two shots, missing both. Mark leapt to his feet, snatched up his gun and poked it skywards before discovering it wasn’t loaded. Madly fumbling for cartridges he fired off two hasty shots, also missing with both. We banged away for a minute or two, felling two or three birds, and then just as suddenly the flight was gone and all went silent.
Still breathless from the excitement, we hurried out to pick up the birds. Suddenly another dense flight swarmed down, calling loudly all about us, circling and swooping – it felt as though we were under air-attack. Caught out in the open, we dropped our dead birds and in all the commotion, each fired two shots without drawing a feather. Mark looked at me in astonishment and we both laughed wildly with exhilaration. That’s the thrill of sandgrouse shooting – it’s an utterly different sporting experience. The birds offer every imaginable type of shot, from every direction and every angle, and always at top speed and jinking. And so it continued – flight after flight. Mark shook his head, red-faced and grinning from ear to ear. “I’ve never seen anything like it!” he exclaimed.
When we’d bagged something over a dozen birds between us, we stopped and counted the empty cartridge cases lying around us. Embarrassingly, we’d fired about four times that many shots. Then we sat under the tree and enjoyed watching the remaining flights of the morning come in, settle and drink, before flying off again.
I recall, as a small boy in the 1950s, seeing a documentary movie about an East African hunting safari showing scenes of sandgrouse shooting at a waterhole which hugely impressed the American hunter. A few years ago Safari Press released the same documentary as a DVD and sent me a copy to review. I was surprised to discover it was made by Robert Ruark, hunting with Harry Selby. I viewed it again for this article. The sandgrouse they shot were bigger than the Namaqua – about rock-pigeon size – but flew in much smaller flocks. The 16mm black-and-white film made identification difficult, but I think theirs were black-faced sandgrouse (which look rather like our double-banded sandgrouse). Ruark would have thrilled to see Namaquas flying in their hundreds.
I TOOK AN elderly American – a lifelong bird-hunter – sandgrouse shooting and he declared it the best wing-shooting he’d ever had. Of course, those three copious, mid-1970s rainy seasons in succession were exceptional – flights of birds in their hundreds were everyday occurrences, and I saw some that must have numbered up to a thousand. In drought years, however, we didn’t go shooting at all.
Let me hasten to add that the situation in SWA was very different then. The border war was in full swing, so there was no safari industry to speak of. Dedicated game ranches offering commercial hunting had yet to take off. Practically no wing-shooting took place anywhere. Most farmers regarded me and my hunting buddy as mad Englishmen who drove long distances and spent sinful sums of money on ammo to miss small birds, when all these kudu, gemsbuck and springbuck were there for the taking. AGRED did not yet exist; few if any serious studies on sandgrouse had taken place and very little was known about them. However, none of this really mattered, as so few people in SWA shot sandgrouse that the species was never in anyway threatened in that country, and remains secure today.
With Namibia being the popular hunting venue it now is, I am sure many game ranchers will have created permanent water sources accessible by sandgrouse. The male bird gathers water in his specially shaped belly-feathers and flies it back to the nest for the chicks to drink. For this, he must be able to walk into shallow water to gather supplies. The average borehole-fed drinking trough for livestock is seldom satisfactory, though I have seen sandgrouse flock in numbers to a small pool in the ground created by a slow-leaking waterpipe at a borehole. They also flight to water in the late afternoon, though whether these are the same birds that drank that morning or just late risers, I couldn’t say.
In those days, SWA’S sandgrouse shooting season began in August, which was outside of their breeding season (April to July). Later, Natcon changed the shooting season to open in September. We always adhered to the legal season, never shot more than the 12-bird limit, never with more than two guns per shoot and never more than twice per season.
Decades later, this subject became somewhat controversial. One well-meaning wingshooter proposed a total ban on all sandgrouse shooting in view of the lack of information on this species. He added that shooting sandgrouse at water
points could be equated with shooting lions over bait (though he seemingly had no objection to the use of decoys to entice duck and geese to camouflaged blinds). AGRED wrote of “unscrupulous hunters killing birds as they land at the water’s edge”. Whether the writer was referring to known incidents or merely expressing his apprehension of what might occur, in order to bolster his argument, was not made clear.
All I can say is that, while I have encountered some unethical and unscrupulous biltong and trophy hunters, my experience of the wingshooting fraternity is that it generally comprises sporting-minded types and I have never encountered a sandgrouse shooter who shot birds coming in to settle at water or just taking off from water. The whole idea is to experience the challenging shots that these fast-flying, jinking birds offer.
Another point raised was that shooting male sandgrouse at water points deprived the nestlings of life-sustaining water. I would have thought that setting the shooting season outside of the breeding season (to ensure that no chicks are depending on the male’s provision of water) would obviate such deprivation. However, in an arid country like Namibia, I would indeed suggest making each shooting season dependant on that year’s rainfall – in drought years, don’t open the season at all. The Namibian Natcon Dept later recommended (but did not legislate) that no sandgrouse shooting take place within 200m of water. The Northern Cape Natcon Department also recommends shooting butts be situated a minimum of 100m from water.
The Afrikaans name for this bird, kelkiewyn (‘cup of wine’), is so perfectly onomatopoeic of its lilting call
NAMIBIA ALSO HAS good populations of double-banded sandgrouse – I never encountered these in the south, but saw plenty in the north, especially at Etosha Pan. You can distinguish them in flight by their tails – the double-banded has a rounded, fan-shaped tail, while the Namaqua has a longer, diamond-shaped tail. Some Burchell’s sandgrouse also occur in parts of Namibia. The Namaqua sandgrouse occurs throughout that country and all the way down to the southernmost shores of the Western Cape.
I love the Afrikaans name for this bird: kelkiewyn (‘cup of wine’) which is so perfectly onomatopoeic of its soft, lilting call, with the accent on the ‘wyn’. I have also heard these birds wrongly called Namaqua partridges – possibly because they often take off in pairs or coveys like terrestrial gamebirds as you walk through the veld. The sandgrouse is actually a distant member of the dove family, and to complicate things, there is also a Namaqualand dove (a true dove).
We always tried to ensure that the birds we shot fell on land, for if they landed in the water, they would rapidly be devoured by terrapins. Terrapins often show their heads above water, but when they are munching away at a floating sandgrouse, you would never know it – they feed from below and there is no visible movement. By the time the breeze has drifted your bird to shore, all you’ll pick up will be the wings and feathered upper carcass – stripped of its flesh beneath. At waterholes in Etosha Park, I saw live sandgrouse standing in shallow water, suddenly start struggling and flapping.
There’d be nary a glimpse of the terrapin – I think it delves into the mud or sand. Remaining submerged, it grabs a leg and tries to pull the bird in. Usually, the bird breaks free and flies off – sometimes minus a foot – but occasionally one is dragged into deeper water to its death – perhaps due to a second terrapin joining the fray.
Sandgrouse make delicious stews and casseroles. Use any tried-and-tested gamebird stew recipe. Cook them whole – the carcass enhances the flavour. The American I took shooting discarded the raw carcasses after removing the breast meat to lightly ‘sauté’ in a pan, but this lacked the flavour of stewed sandgrouse. Preferably use a cast-iron pot, and simmer very slowly until the meat is falling off the bone, or use a stainless-steel pressure-cooker. Pearl barley makes a superb additive, as does red wine. My wife often added fresh cream toward the end, which was very well received.