These drawings celebrate the logic of the loud Hadeda (Bostrychia hagedash) – an ibis native to Sub-Saharan Africa. It is named for its three to four note calls uttered in flight. The Joburg our alarm clock.

From my new studio in Indwe park, Braamfontein I drew these wild wading birds daily while grazing on the green grass. My wife feeds the afvlerk Hettie and her young Hendrik dog pellets from our stoep in the parks.

The hadeda is urbanised because they can feed double their prey on our irrigated green grass lawns than the amount of food they can access in the wild because of the good vibrations their beaks pick up from the earthworms beneath the ground (du Toit, Chinsamy and Cunningham, 2024).

If you don’t like them, revert your green lawns to highveld savannah. Which would be a sound ecological decision all round because our savannas are waterwise. In an era of ‘watershedding’, energy failure and everything else!