This Mitchell's Plain birder talks about the birds of South Africa from a very unique angle
Ornithologist Miqkayla Stofberg grew up in biodiversity-poor Mitchell's Plain, so even a common sparrow delights her. Now she's using her excitement to reach new birders
During Covid, Miqkayla was starved of nature. A visit by this Southern Double-collared Sunbird sent her into ecstasy IMAGE Miqkayla Stofberg
I’m a girly from Mitchell’s Plain in the Cape Flats… born and bred. People know me as the animal lover, but the truth is my love and fascination for wildlife didn’t stem from my environment — that came from TV.
My mother raised me on her own. She was strict and protective and took great pride in me being a studious child, always coming home with good marks and helping her friends’ children with their homework. The problem was I grew up to carry the weight of being ‘the perfect child’.
Birding smashed that to pieces… in the best way. It taught me to drop that perfection act and step into myself. It told me: be your authentic, brown-girl, birder self in this space that’s usually very white and male.
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Now I talk about my birding from the only perspective I have: someone who grew up starved of biodiversity. So I’m going to get over-excited every time I see a common bird, no matter where I see it.
"Birding told me: be your authentic, brown-girl birder self in this space that's usually very white and male"
Miqkayla never expected the kind of joy she would feel holding—and releasing—a Verreauxs’ Eagle IMAGE Cheslin Hickley
I knew I was going to choose a career in… biological sciences at the University of Cape Town, but I didn’t know I was going to specialise in birds.
One day, I volunteered to help a PhD student… with her fieldwork on Verreauxs’ Eagles in the Cederberg. We spent a week there. We had to wake up at four in the morning and hike up this mountain to a spot right below the eagle’s nest.
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She had her own chickens… in a cage to lure the eagles. The idea was the eagles would fly down to the cages and be trapped by nooses (the chickens weren’t harmed and it was all an ethically approved process, obviously).
On the first day we didn’t catch anything… and on the second, third and fourth morning, nothing. The last day, we were so tired because we’d been waking up early for a week. We had to lie on this rock under a camouflaged blanket in silence the whole time.
Then we heard the chickens losing their minds… and we knew it was about to go down! The eagles lunged at the cage and were caught. We waited for a minute before peeping through the hole … and we saw not one, but two eagles!
Few people ever get to see a Verreauxs’ Eagle claw up close; the power is sobering IMAGE Courtesy Miqkayla Stofberg
We rushed over and put little hoods over their eyes. They were calm. Then we weighed them. We took blood samples and we measured the wingspan and the leg length.
I was really just there to hold the bird. I held him with his feet away from me so his back was resting on my chest. I was holding his legs just above his ankles, where the leg bends … so he couldn’t grab my hands and do serious damage — because his talons are his weapons!
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We processed the birds in complete silence. I was calm, but also in awe of what we were doing… It was also so amazing to know that I was holding this whole eagle in my hands!
The best part was when we released the… bird back into the air. It was so unreal and majestic, I think I nearly cried. I left that fieldwork site that day thinking, “I want to feel like that again. I want to experience more of that joy and I want to have more close bird encounters.” I thought, “I’m a birder now. I’m going to be a birder.”
An African Fish-eagle is an impressive sight no matter how many times you see one IMAGE Eric Kamoga, Pexels
But as a birder I sometimes feel like a chameleon… I’m from Mitchell’s Plain on the Cape Flats, lived there all my life… In the 10 years I studied at UCT I felt lonely and resentful having to navigate those two worlds, code-switching.
This one time, I went to Zimbabwe… for the Pan-African Ornithological Conference at Victoria Falls. We were on an excursion on a boat on the Zambezi River. Other people had come to bird for the species endemic to that region.
There was a fish-eagle… which you can find in many parts of southern Africa. It was beautiful, sitting right on top of a tree and positioned perfectly for a photo. Nobody else but me wanted to see the fish-eagle. They said, “Oh, you can see a fish-eagle back home.”
But I thought, “What do you mean you can see a fish-eagle back home? I have to go through so much effort to see one and he’s right here. Why would you not appreciate the fish eagle?!” They made me feel like an idiot wanting to see the fish-eagle.
That moment made me realise… I experienced birding differently – from a perspective of lack, from the perspective of someone who’s been starved of biodiversity for most of her life.
There’s a pattern around the world called the luxury effect: biodiversity and the abundance of species increase in neighbourhoods as income increases, and in lower-income neighbourhoods there are fewer opportunities to experience biodiversity.
In South Africa, it highlights the legacy of apartheid in urban areas… and the lack of investment in green spaces. There’s so much research that shows how access to nature like this improves health and well-being. The Mitchell’s Plain landscape reflects this lack of biodiversity.
During Covid, we were all indoors I was starved of green spaces… and that’s when I noticed the very first Southern Double-collared Sunbird in my garden in Mitchell’s Plain. I was so excited that I took a video. I geeked out about that bird, losing my mind over his pectoral tufts. And then I posted the video to Tiktok, and people loved it. I think they loved my childish excitement, my passion about birds.
What surprised me is you think you need to be polished… but what people want is authenticity and real excitement. And I thought I’m going to lean into this, and that’s how @hoodbirder was created.
I decided to step into myself as a brown girl… from Mitchell’s Plain, which isn’t the most biodiverse space. But that’s what makes me excited about any bird I come across, doesn’t matter if it’s a common species or where I see it. And that’s been the spirit of my Instagram page.
My friends made me feel like this is important work… representation is important, and so I made it public. Now I want to travel more and see more birds. I’m determined to see all the birds in Southern Africa. That’s my biggest dream: I just want to see all African birds.
I’d love to find my own birding community… like there’s a group of brown women who connect around the tidal pools in Kalk Bay — Aaniyah Martin, Traci Kwaai and others — and they have such a sense of community. I’d love to find that with other birders.
It’s also why I’ve started leading birding tours, because I want… people to share in my excitement about birds and build a more diverse community that I can bird with.
DETAILS
TOUR COST R200 for South Africans, R300 for tourists.
NEXT TOUR Follow @hoodbirder to find out when and where.