Our students recently enjoyed a highly educational birding day out in the St Lucia section of the Isimangaliso Wetland Park, where they recorded numerous species in a variety of habitats.
Highly diverse, St Lucia offers some of the best sightings of birds in coastal, estuary, grassland and forest habitats, making it ideal for training purposes.
Paul Jossop was a Bhejane Nature Training student some 13 years ago, and was on the first advanced course we ever ran.
Now a renowned birding guide who works all over South Africa and further into Africa, Paul helps us out with training and lectures.
Specialist bird guide Paul Jossop with the group of Bhejane students on a recent birding trip to St Lucia. Photo by Paul Josop
During the birding field trip to St Lucia, Paul showed the students how to use spotting sights to catch the various birds in their different habitats, and they were rewarded with some incredible sightings, including African Finfoot and Green Twinspots.
With the abundance of wildlife in South Africa, our birdlife is often overlooked, including by prospective nature guides.
But a knowledge of birds, their habitats and their behaviour is crucial for guides, as birding tours have, in recent years, become very popular.
Photograph by Ivan Euckermann
There has been a surge of birders since the Covid-related lockdown when people had time on their hands to sit in their gardens – they started noticing and taking an interest in birds, and now they want industry professionals to teach them more.
At Bhejane we have always gone above and beyond, and offered fully-comprehensive nature guiding courses that train guides up to be knowledgeable about our whole ecosystem.
We keep to our mandate of providing only the best training for guides coming through our ranks, by making sure birding is covered in both our long and short courses. Students on the Bhejane Advanced Nature Guiding and Wildlife Conservation Course spend time each year, exploring some of Southern Africa’s most exciting birding hotspots.
The Regional Birding Specialist Course is a specialist short course that can be done on its own or completed as one of the modules on the longer career courses.
Being a FGASA Nature Guide is a dream job, envied by many. And for good reason. While it is certainly hard work, the rewards are numerous. Nature Guiding as a professional career has evolved steadily over the last two decades. Today it is a much sought-after career option all over Southern Africa.
Is Nature Guiding your future?
Why Become a Fgasa Nature Guide
Fgasa is the most widely recognised standard setting and certification body for nature guides. It is enjoys recognition in Southern Africa and many other parts of the world.
Fgasa Nature Guide qualifications provides the perfect platform to launch your nature guiding career.
As the first of a new generation of industry orientated learning programmes, you will love you much fun learning is on this course. The programme combines the intimately related fields of Professional Nature Guiding, Conservation/Wildlife Management, Monitoring and Research, and Tourism and Hospitality.
This enables the student to get a quality academic qualification whilst at the same time living and training in the bush. The 3 year programme is a good alternative to short informal bush courses with little value, or a lengthy academic programme that still leaves you unemployable.
At Bhejane our focus is broader than simply training guides for prestigious and upmarket lodge environments.
Wildlife Tourism products are diverse and exciting! It follows naturally that your options for guiding are equally diverse and exciting. Bhejane prepare you as a nature guide so you get to know yourself better and find the correct niche in the industry that suits your unique personal and professional profile.
Do our fun quiz to find out what type of guide you could be.
FGASA Trails Guide Candidates
The Bhejane Playground
Bhejane’s commitment to purposeful career training will ensure that you can now do all of this in one place, gain valuable practical experience and qualify for an industry placement at the same time.
In addition to the benefits stated above, this is the only programme of its kind that prepares the student to work in both terrestrial and marine protected areas. Learn more about our exciting camps and courses here.
Open Water Diving on the FGASA Marine Guide Course
Base in Northern Zululand and bordering the Isimangaliso Wetlands Park the college could hardly be in a better place. Widely recognised as an area of unrivalled biodiversity, this offers the opportunity to live, study and work in one of the most diverse natural environments in Southern Africa.
The programme is suitable for anyone that is interested in working in Wildlife Tourism and Conservation, either as a Professional Nature Guide, Wildlife Monitor, Research Assistant, Conservation Volunteer Coordinator, Marine Guide or Conservation Entrepreneur. The course caters specifically for students that want more than an entry level guiding qualification, and is looking for a more practical training approach than what is available through traditional academic qualifications. Download our Career Fact Sheets here.
Bhejane Nature Training is a fully endorsed FGASA Training Provider. (Field Guides Association of Southern Africa)
Join us today, to become a part of the Zululand Conservation Legacy . . .
There is something about the bush, the sound of the birds singing early in the morning, the branches breaking in the distance by elephants, the roar of the lion spreading through the mountains. Waking up in the cold winter morning staring ahead with your head peeping out the zip of your safari tent, overlooking the Mkuze River, having breakfast around a fire pit still warm from the night befores boma fire,feeling refreshed and ready for a full day of walking trails – This is how you start your day at Ebandla Camp.
Working with Colin Patrick and his amazing K9 sidekick (Anne) is one of the best experiences, just by observing them work together, side by side and with a different insight! Trailing an animal gives you the courage to improve your skills. As soon as you find a fresh track, the hunt is on, bundu bashing through the bushes looking for any sign of the animal you are tracking in the sand, in the trees along the river banks – to find an animal you need to think like one!
This is such an amazing experience because you can learn a lot about the animals behaviour, By asking things like ‘What type of food it eats? Was it on its way to a specific location? or maybe just wondering around? by looking at the tracks you can see if the animal is relaxed and walking slow or on edge walking fast.
It is hard work and requires a lot of concentration, but the thrill of tracking a wild animal never ceases to excite me!
As the days go by tracking different animals and learning more about ourselves in the process just adding on to knowledge displayed all around us with every step we take. I remember how nervous I was for the assessment day -It was a perfect sunny morning, everyone was standing around the boma and you could just see the stress of test day show on their faces, but the we started walking and I couldn’t help but to look at my surroundings and just seeing how beautiful nature really helped me to calm down.
We walked for a while before Colin stopped us and split us into two groups and briefed us on our task at hand – one group would walk for 15 minutes to get as far away as possible and hide away and the opposing group would have to track the hiders down! The assessment has begun. After 15 minutes one person was chosen to lead the track for the hiding group – As we tracked and trailed we finally found them and it was now our time to hide.
This process went on until everyone had a chance to track spreading this experience on for 2 days! Every moment as exciting and challenging as the next, when we were all done leading, Colin sat us down and the feedback process began.
After meeting with each of us, we were all happy to hear how well the assessments went.
I was sitting outside enjoying the beautiful view that Ebandla camp has to offer and it just got me thinking of how amazing this week was, how wonderful it is to learn something new everyday and how amazing and thrilling it is to track an animal and become one and more connected with this beautiful country.
The day I decided that I would dedicate my life to the conservation of the superbly beautiful ecosystems that still cover a large part of the African continent, I was only a 6-year old boy that had just moved to Africa, without any understanding or knowledge about the complex world I was about to discover.
But this dream accompanied me over the next 13 years, motivated me every single day, shaped my way of doing things and caused me to collect every piece of information available to me, desperately hoping that it would eventually bring me a bit closer to that big goal. When I found Bhejane, I would never have thought that this would mean the ultimate break-through for me in achieving my dream. At the same time, the course gave me more than just a confirmation for what I always wanted to do: It opened a whole new world for me.
It was like looking for a sparrow and finding a twinspot (I have no issues with sparrows!). In fact, I didn’t even know that twinspots existed. Or what the difference between a sparrow and a starling is. This winter, not even a year after I left Bhejane, I returned and passed my regional birding.
This is only one example for how Bhejane changed my life, my way of thinking and my relationship with nature. The unbelievable perfection and creativity of evolution that Bhejane allowed me to discover still makes my heart beat faster every time I think about it, or realize how crazy it is that spiders can detect stress allelochemicals thanks to the lyriform organs on their legs (first example that comes to my mind). You never stop learning! And there is no bigger honor than working for nature and with nature.
The environment Bhejane is operating in would be more than enough to amaze every lucid-thinking human being. But additionally to that, I got to meet people that think like me. It may sound crazy, but I actually never had considered in the past that there might be other people that share my passion. I probably don’t have to mention that I got to know a large number of special persons that became some of my closest friends and my idols. I had the privilege to meet some people with phenomenal knowledge and skills, to watch them and to learn from them.
It was like coming home. And it will always be like coming home when returning to the places where all this started. Because it’s not going to end soon.
I am often told, how lucky I am to live where I live, and do what it is I do for a living – I am sure people in similar positions, also often hear this and over time you really get use to being told how privileged you are from someone else’s point of view- so much so that I have developed a pretty standard response – I smile, and then agree with them not thinking about it too much.
After all it is what I do every day, if I had to articulate the way I really feel about this place called the Elephant Coast- I would not know how as it triggers an emotion so immensely strong I can barely control myself and in that moment words become meaningless and the only words I am left with, sound a little something like this..
“It left me speechless”
I write this today, although I have been writing this in my head for the past 5 years, forever letting it linger until I can find the perfect words to be able to formulate a sentence, never mind string them into a story for anyone else to share into this experience, and too be sincere I am not sure I would ever find the right words to describe the impact the Elephant Coast has had on me, this is one of those “see it to believe it” cases and I highly recommend that you do.
The Elephant Coast is a narrow stretch of land, touching home to the vast warm waters of the Indian Ocean & multi diverse Zululand (KwaZulu Natal, South Africa). It is here where you can come to feel the breath of the Sub tropical, it is here where my words become buried so deep beneath the history that these soils contain and spread so far across the floodplains and into the open ocean. The only place in the world where you can come to witness so many different ecosystems, vegetation structures, and climatic character variations flow together in perfect harmony earning the right to be classified under its own biome, namely the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt. A pure example of outstanding ecological processes, superlative natural phenomena and scenic beauty, and exceptional biodiversity and home so many threatened species.
How does one even begin to explain something so diverse, unique and endemic in simple forms?
It is in these sand forests where the last remaining herds of ‘Big tusker’ elephants roamed for centuries and left their mark on the very tips of our tongues. It is here where coral reefs have formed on remains of ancient sand dunes creating one of a kind reefs, home to over 1200 fish species, including the Coelacanth, a fish species thought to be extinct but still lurks in the depths of these waters – described as The Living Fossil. It is here where the largest estuarine system on the African continent, you can come to see the largest population of hippopotamus and crocodile share a space with the Bull Shark that follow the high tide in to feed on any juvenile life hiding among the aerial roots of mangrove trees that stand as guards along the edges of our coastline, giving chance for other habitats to develop, it is here where King Shaka’s right hand man fled to after fearing he too would suffer the same fate and be assassinated- found himself emerged deep in the beauty of the flat, vast and open land with many lakes in 1828– It was the home of the Tsonga people, then known as Tembeland – Upon arriving, the beauty that overwhelmed him set the core for the naming of this region, the name so perfectly chosen for this region ‘iSimangaliso’ meaning miracle and wonders remain as true today, as it did almost 200 years ago.
Magical.
Once it lures you in, it has got you for life. I cannot recall the exact day I fully grasped the magnitude of the words “You are lucky” meant for me. I was raised in the guiding industry, both my parents are guides and passion driven people, passion not only for the natural surroundings, but for creating a community of like-minded people to create, spread and share more moments of magic.
A passion, I guess you can say it is in my blood.
I was born with it and so I will continue to grow with it every day being reminded through a series of moments- like the first time I got to witness a loggerhead turtle emerge from the comfort of her aquatic environment to lay eggs in the coastal dunes of Bhanga Nek, Kosi Bay. That moment upon realizing that this turtle has survived the odds, living through natures natural process and unpredictability, that realization of “Here I am, in her presence, watching her… what a rarity” , even walking back up the beach, with every step brighter than the next as my feet shuffle and awaken the bioluminesence hidden beneath the surface of the faintly wet sand. The first time I ever got to witness a Humpback Whale and her calf swim right by me while diving a spot called Pinnacles in Sodwana Bay, sharing a momentary glimpse of each other as one tail movement sent her meters ahead of me and within seconds they were gone again and just like that, an appreciation for these waters I find myself in. I am quickly reminded that these are not only the breeding waters for whales, but some of the most unique reefs dominated by soft coral and marine life so diverse, significant that with every breathe fueling your lungs as you sink down deeper you become almost instantaneously humbled.
It is in these moments when it becomes clear, how lucky I truly am.
The Elephant Coast captured my heart and became my home and my office – Privileged to share the stories of the past, determined to keep a sustainable present and looking forward to many more once in a lifetime experiences, never failing to appreciate any moment whether I find myself under a blanket of stars on a clear night or even just hearing the rumble of the ocean on a windy day.
Speechless is the only way to describe the feeling one gets upon realizing that every day you get to live and breathe in a place of miracles, a literal heaven on earth, a sacred place.
There really is no place, like home.
By:Nicole Panos
We lead the way . . . follow us into Bhejane Territory!
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