The birds that come down over the Overberg come here
A permitted raptor ward on a wheat farm outside Napier. About ninety birds a year — powerline burns, fractures, poisoning, orphans. Most of them go back.
Found a bird?The ward
Every bird admitted gets an entry: what it is, where it came from, what was wrong with it, and where it went. Nothing is written up afterwards to look better than it was.
Who runs it
Marie Steenkamp and her son Pieter, on the family farm between Napier and Bredasdorp. Marie has held a CapeNature rehabilitation permit since 2009.
Nobody here draws a salary. The ward is one converted implement shed, four hospital pens and a forty-metre flight tunnel down the side of the lucerne lands.
What we take
Owls, kestrels, buzzards, harriers, goshawks — anything with talons. The permit covers raptors and nothing else.
Seabirds go to Gansbaai, everything else to the vet in Bredasdorp. If you bring us a bird we are not allowed to hold, we drive it there the same afternoon rather than send you back onto the road with it.
What we do not do
We do not keep birds for display, we do not bring one on a glove to school open days, and we do not take chicks that are only learning to fly.
A fledgling on the ground with a parent calling nearby is not an orphan. Put the dogs inside and leave it where it is.
If you find a grounded bird
- Throw a jersey or a towel over it before you do anything else. A covered bird stops fighting, and the feet are the part that hurts you, not the beak.
- Lift it with both hands around the folded wings, talons pointed away from you, into a cardboard box with air holes and a towel on the floor. Never a wire cage — it wrecks the flight feathers in a night.
- Lid closed, box in a dark quiet room, no radio. No water, no meat, no milk, no bread. Half of what we lose was fed something with good intentions before it reached us.
- Phone 082 553 9014 and say where you are. If nobody answers, phone again — keep the bird boxed and do not drive it around the district looking for someone to take it.
You drive the box back to the same field the farmer picked it up in, you open the lid, and then you stand there like a fool, because it is three hundred metres away already and it never once looks back. That is the whole job. Eleven years and it has not gone stale on me.Nomsa Jacobs, volunteer, Thursdays
Find us
Uitkyk, on the R316 eleven kilometres from Bredasdorp. Second gate after the grain silos. Ring the bell at the shed, not at the house.
Emergency line
082 553 9014, seven days, 06h00 to 21h00. After nine at night send a WhatsApp with a photo and your location — it wakes the phone and we answer at first light.
Visiting
Saturdays 10h00 to 12h00, booked only. A bird that gets looked at all week stops being afraid of people, and then it cannot go back. R40 a head goes to feed.
Helping
Day-old chicks from the hatchery, clean towels, newspaper, diesel for the fetch runs. Or R150 a month, which is roughly what one owl eats. Ask and we will send the banking details.
Send it in writing
For everything that is not a bird in a box — permits, ringing records, donations of timber or shade cloth, and the slow questions. We answer in a day or two. A bird in a box is a phone call, not an email.