Family packs up home and goes birding (and fundraising)

Hello my “Bru-Bru” is how I nonchalantly greeted long time friend, Craig, when he and his beautiful family recently stayed with us for a few days, while on their wider Gauteng leg of their Birding Big Year.

For the birders, you will understand my “punny” greeting to Craig, for the non-birders, or rather ignorant or uneducated birders like myself, a Brubru is a type of bird. The Fourways birders should know this one well – even has a Fourways “boet” type hairstyle.

Enough about Fourways, haircuts and “boet’s”. This blog is about an incredible, courageous and adventurous family – The Widdows. Craig, Christine and their beautiful children, Wren and Finn. They have decided to pack up home, and take what their little Suzuki Jimny can fit, and embark on their Birding Big Year, to find the 800 or so bird species occurring in South Africa, and raise funds for the BirdLife South Africa Community Bird Guide Training Project.

Enjoy the read, adventure and many birds (and smiles) you will encounter!

For our family, the rigours of 2020 have convinced us that we needed to throw caution to the wind and embrace the moment, right now. Our dream of immersing ourselves in nature and providing our son and daughter with a childhood grounded in the outdoors – could this be possible? Slowly, as our family’s life returned to its pre-2020 form, we knew we had to make this dream a reality.

‘We’ are the Widdows, an ecologist and an occupational therapist established in 2005, married in 2013 and expanded in 2016 and 2018. Our daughter Wren and son Finn are avid nature lovers who find the most joy when barefoot in the bush. As bird lovers and budding twitchers, our children have been moved from safari tents to bird hides since they were a few weeks old. 

A Birding Big Year – one calendar year dedicated to searching for as many bird species as possible – has always been on our bucket list. Yes, we’re going to attempt to track down some of our country’s more secretive species, with four-year-old Wren and two-year-old Finn on board – what could possibly go wrong? Given the impressive diversity of birds and incredible biomes within our country, we have decided to make this a proudly South African adventure. We have taken sabbaticals, packed up our home and traded in our old life for one incredible year in 2021. 

Since the Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on South Africa’s tourism, we are using our journey to raise funds and support for the Community Bird Guide Training Project run by BirdLife South Africa. Over the past 20 years or so the project has successfully trained more than 200 individuals from historically disadvantaged communities to become professional bird and nature guides. Its goals are to enable individuals to benefit from avitourism and empower them to become successful entrepreneurs with sustainable livelihoods. By supporting these community guides, we also support their families and broader communities.

We would like to make an appeal to support this initiative by visiting our project funding page (121966-community-bird-guide-training-project) to assist in the continued training of bird guides. All funds donated via this link will be paid through to BirdLife South Africa. By working with this initiative, we can continue to bring together job creation and conservation at a community level. 

Throughout our Birding Big Year, we also aim to connect with various registered bird guides from the project, contracting and promoting their services while birding in the areas they operate in. If you would like to support our family along the way, either financially (126231-widdows-family-birding-big-year-2021) or maybe you know a good birding spot that we simply must see, we would love to hear from you.

Our Birding Big Year is not only about chasing rarities and adding to our year list, but rather an opportunity to rediscover ourselves and how we fit into our natural world. Hopefully, through our journey, we will be able to encourage more families to get involved in the incredibly entertaining hobby that is birding. We are currently 25 days into the year and have crossed into four provinces, changed many nappies in a cramped car and recorded over 330 bird species. What we have realised is our magical country holds some spectacular areas often in rather obscure places. On your next trip or family getaway try a road less traveled, trust us, it will be so worth it.

You will be able to follow The Widdows Family on their exciting journey by checking ‘Our Birding Big Year 2021’ on Facebook and Instagram.