Glimpse of a bygone era In the dog box Coming alive Eye-opener

• Date: 03 December 2020
• Published date: 03 December 2020
• Publication title: Constantiaberg Bulletin

What did she think killed it? "Perhaps it was a squirrel… they are tree-rats and can be quite nasty... or maybe it was a crow. Clearly the adult hadeda wanted the dead chick out of the nest."

Hearing that she was now focused on seeing an African goshawk spotted in the area, I hauled out our well-thumbed copy of Roberts Birds of South Africa to find a coloured plate of this bird painted in flight by Norman C.K. Lighton for the 1981 edition. Although frequently visible in wooded areas and mountain forests, this "extremely bold bird has come into heavily built-up suburbs of large towns and is very rapacious. It is a menace to poultry".

I have never seen this bird, but I might well have heard it as it has the habit early in the morning to circle high up and make clicking notes every three to six seconds, which it can keep up for half an hour. I've often wondered what bird it was clicking away so high in the sky but now thanks to Austin Roberts I think I now know.

Roberts died in a car accident in the Transkei in 1948, but I had the good fortune, in 1976, to meet his original artist, Norman Lighton. He was being honoured by a medical friend who sponsored the publication of a handsome coffee-table book of some of Lighton's original paintings. Those selected were showing wear and tear from all the re-printing and were going to be replaced in colour by other artists for the next publication.

I recall how frail Lighton looked and he clearly had problems with his eyes from painting hundreds of birds for the book. I counted 17 tiny bird paintings all on the same page as the African goshawk, but the originals were big.

I had a positive response from Lilian Gloyne about some of the popular venues which had appeared in a Cape Times advertisement of 50 years ago. Though not living in the area to receive the Constantiaberg Bulletin, she happened so see a copy and got a surprise when she read the November 19 column asking readers to let me know if they knew what had happened to any of these venues.

Several of the places meant a lot to her.

"I had my wedding reception at the Clifton Hotel with the smorgasbord and started out on our honeymoon at the Gordon's Bay Hotel - probably on the R12 weekend special that you mentioned.

"It's our 50th wedding anniversary soon, and so many of those places were our haunts back in the day. Sadly no chance to revisit our original venues, as the Clifton Hotel is now an old age home and the Gordon's Bay Hotel has been demolished. We were...