Birding as fast as you can

It's tough, competitive, and you can die on the job - being a world-class twitcher is no picnic

We all like to be the best. For the characters in the birding "bromance" The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson, "the best" means becoming the world's greatest birder.

To win this honour, the characters take part in a cut-throat, often bizarre, contest to see who can spot the most bird species right across North America in just one calendar year.

The world's actual top birders use the entire planet as their stomping ground. Of the earth's 10000 bird species, Englishman Tom Gullick has seen 8935, with only a handful of people having seen more than 7000. Ian Sinclair, Africa's top birder and author of Sasol Birds of Southern Africa, is one. I spoke to Sinclair, now 62 and living in Cape Town, about his lifelong pursuit of birds.

When did your love affair with birds start?

I started as a kid in Holywood, Northern Ireland. I don't remember a time I wasn't interested in birds. But let me qualify that - it didn't start from an altruistic side. I had a catapult. And an airgun. I used to collect their eggs. I was actually a hooligan. It was a very schoolboyish thing to do. Most of my buddies packed it in when they turned 12 or 13. You know, women came into their lives. I didn't - I could deal with the women and birds all at the same time.

How did you end up in Africa?

Birding in the UK is disastrous. There are no birds. One day in South Africa would probably deliver the same number of birds you'd see in Ireland in your whole life, so Africa's been my patch. When I arrived aged 22, I found the most beautiful birds here. Big and in your face. People talk about the Amazon basin being magnificent. And it is, quite. But the Congo basin is way better. And the birds much better-looking.

How big is your life list?

I stopped listing birds when I turned 60. A buddy of mine died of exhaustion during a birding trip to Venezuela and I thought: "How stupid is this? Why be pressurised to see every last bloody bird?"

At the time my list stood at more than 7500 birds worldwide. I guess the secret to my success has been tenacity, passion, and a bit of madness. I've been to every continent, including Antarctica, five times. I've even been to the North Pole, to Svalbard. I'm a museologist and I had a permit to collect four polar bears for the British Museum. I didn't shoot them - but they were on my permit, all right.

Are there any African birds you still need to tick off?

There are only about 20 of Africa's 2500 bird species I haven't seen. Most of these species only live in Somalia and Djibouti ... but who the f*** wants to go there? You'll die. I'm still obsessed with the idea, but I'm not going to die for those birds - they're little brown jobs, anyway. One moment you're birdwatching and the next there's a rocket flying at you.

Have you ever done a Big Year?

Yes, in 1985. Jack Winterbottom, then director of the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, had been predicting no one would see more than 600 species in one year. And I thought: "Stuff that. I don't believe that, when you've 962 bird species here."

So I went off on my Big Year and, 12 months later, on December 30, I was almost at the 900 mark. I really wanted to crack it. So a mate picked me up at the airport in Joburg, and we drove all the way to Rust de Winter in Limpopo. We got one bird there. And another in Polokwane. Then we shot to hell and gone across the country to Pongola, on the KwaZulu-Natal border. All in a day. On December 31 I twitched number 900. At this point I'd seen so many birds I think they were starting to recognise me.

What's the farthest you've gone to see a bird?

It was the 1990s, and I'd just arrived home in Durban from West Africa, only to find out a bizarrely rare American bird - a Hudsonian godwit - had been seen in Port Elizabeth. That was 2pm, so I jumped in my car and drove straight to PE, because I couldn't get a flight and wanted to be there at first light. Next morning, I found it, at Swartkops Estuary. It actually breeds in the Hudson Bay area, but I guess it got lost in migration. Now that's what, in the birding world, you might call a "CMF" ("cosmic mind f***ker"). But they won't use that in the paper.

You've been in love with birds all your life. Why do they make you tick?

Birding takes you to places no one would dream of visiting. I mean, who'd ever think of going to Ulan Bator? Who wants to go to Pofadder - for a whole week? It's a hunt. You're actually physically hunting without killing anything. And you'll get up at two o'clock in the morning, and go sit in a place for hours, and wait for that thing to turn up. And of course you'll photograph it. Or you'll just say: "Wow ... orgasmic."

TELL US: What's the rarest bird you've seen? E-mail tiara.greenlife@gmail.com.

• The Big Year is on circuit.

Raven Mad - Birding big day

The Everest of the local birding world is Birding Big Day, a fowl fixation held country-wide each November to raise funds for non-profit organisation BirdLife South Africa.

To compete, twitcher teams must spot as many birds as possible from midnight to midnight within a 50km radius anywhere in South Africa. To win, you must be an expert birder - obsessive, even, and be willing to brave hellacious hours and weather. For all their pains, however, few teams have ever cracked the 300 mark.

In 2005, "Raiders of the Lost Lark" were the very first with 302 species. In the 2011 competition team Zonke iNyoni finished just shy of 320 species, with 181 teams taking part throughout the country. To sign up for the 2012 leg, visit www.birdlife.org.za

Natural Selection

In a country where the tap water is perfectly drinkable in most parts, our dependence on bottled water beggars belief. By using water straight from the tap to create flavoured, carbonated beverages, SodaStream makes store-bought fizzy drinks obsolete, resulting in less transportation of bottled beverages, the production of less plastic and, ultimately, less waste. Each SodaStream carbonating bottle can be used for up to three years - just think of all the plastic (and money) that saves. Visit www.sodastream.co.za for more.

Giveaway

Green Life and SodaStream are giving away two "World without Bottles" drinks makers valued at R499 each. For details on how to enter, visit Green Life's Facebook community at www.facebook.com/stgreenlife