Woke up to news of Stage 6 (six) loadshedding and the sound of a spotter plane and fire helicopters overhead.
This isn’t good.
The Stage 6 loadshedding is “retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech”, according to some online pundits. But this seems a little silly to me. The Budget speech was postponed four days ago. Why wait until 1am on a Sunday morning if you are a vindictive ruling party wanting to make a point? Who – apart from the most weird of tinfoil hat wearers (see above) – is going to put those two and two together to make four? Far more likely is that the power grid – held together with vinegar and brown paper borrowed from Jack of the famous nursery rhyme – fell over when someone forgot to tie the string properly.
Others online suggested that the loadshedding was somehow the City of Cape Town’s fault, arguing that “Cape Independence can’t come soon enough”, while conveniently forgetting that a massive 0.26% of the 58.64% of voters who turned out, actually supported that idea in last year’s election.
Either way, any way, whatever: it’s a shlep being without power for 12 hours a day. Again.
The fire is on Table Mountain, probably about 4km from our place, but it’s heading up and away from us at the moment. “African prayer groups” was the wildest conspiracy theory I saw for this one, but why not “retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech”? Cyril’s place is literally 1km from where it mysteriously started in the early hours of the morning.
Either way, it’s far from sorted yet, and the spotter plane is still circling overhead, endlessly spotting.
The best way to get around these problems is to try and ignore the drone of the plane and the lack of electricity, and go to the gym. And so that’s what I did. And it was as I left the gym that I thought I saw the silhouette of a woodpecker in a tree in the back garden.
As you do.
But no, woodpeckers do have a rather distinctive shape. So I wandered closer to investigate and yes:
The old bird proof/ID photography policy thing worked well here. Get any photo first, no matter how bad, and then try to work from there. That’s what this is: the first bit. I gave up on the work from there bit, as I was knackered from the gym.
And that’s a female Olive Woodpecker (Dendropicos grisocephalus). Not uncommon, apparently, but a first for me, and certainly a first for me in our garden. The male was there too, but he didn’t hang around for a hastily taken photo like his missus. She was also gone pretty soon afterwards (probably as retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech), but a nice spot and one to watch out for again.
I’m looking forward to an afternoon of napping and football watching, now that the odd morning is done.
