Birds - of a feather...!

I love birds, and they have featured in all my novels. From the gulls riding the south-easters above Simon's Town, to the various tweeters and raptors that swoop through the Karoo or the Winelands, birds have both inspired - and troubled - the characters at the centre of my plots.

In The Housemaid's Daughter, Ada draws on ancestral fears about the potential of noisy hadedas (ibises) to deliver bad tidings. As they honk their way above the Great Fish River, will they carry the news of her mixed race child to Cradock House? Will her betrayal become known to the family she loves?

In The Girl from Simon's Bay, Louise admires the ribbon-tailed sugarbirds that perch on pincushion proteas on the mountainside. She's less keen on flycatchers, known as 'butcher birds'. They like to spear their insect prey on barbed wire before eating them! Curing them, her mother used to tease, waiting till they were just a little crispy!

By contrast, cryptically-coloured nightjars are far more restrained. They often settle on quiet roads at night, emitting a low, distinctive call over and over, and only stop if disturbed. When Fili, in The Case Against Fili Du Bois, hears a broken-off call one night, she fears intruders on her father's land. She prefers the familiarity of jackal buzzards circling by day, and pied kingfishers that hover and dive into the farm dam within the blink of an eye.    

Frances, the heroine of The Fire Portrait, looks at birds through an artist's eye. The stark Karoo landscape offers unexpected treasures like quiver trees, with their lofty cactus-like leaves and brilliant yellow flowers after the rains come - and the distinctive, feathered visitors that follow:  
I blend blues and greens to create the malachite sunbirds that gorge on the quiver blooms - but the glitter of their wings defies my brush, which is as it should be. 
Real life holds miracles that no likeness can capture...