Walk On The Wild Side with Howard Butcher

Until the age of eleven I grew up in Kenya, next to the estate of Karen Blixen (Out of Africa), in an idyllic environment that would nurture any inquisitive mind wanting to explore and appreciate the wonders of the world. By the age of five I was in awe of everything about me and so started of an insatiable life-long quest for knowledge and understanding of nature. It happened that my family were intrinsically involved in establishing the National Parks system in Kenya so my interests were always encouraged.

Karen, as it became known, was a place where in the quiet of night I would often hear free-roaming lions roar and hyena giggle, and I gradually became aware that the bush had a universal language of its own and I wanted to speak it fluently. I became fanatical; long before developing any ability to kick a ball around I had fathomed that animals and insects communicated by casting spells upon each other and I became engrossed in their world of wizardry. Still today I am amazed at how pheromone communication works, messaging and remote control between individuals and in some cases even between species.

But that world vanished in 1969 when I arrived to attend boarding school in South Africa, at SACS in Cape Town. Amazingly I could still hear lions roar at night but they were lions imprisoned in the tiny cages of Rhodes Memorial Zoo at the university estate nearby, and these were roars of pitiful emotional pain. Oddly I found some solace in that, since we were both imprisoned and had lost our worlds.

I distracted myself with an interest in music and before long I was the bass player in one of South Africa’s successful outfits of the 70s and 80s, The Lancaster Band. For better or worse, this distraction duped me out of a zoology career and instead I studied air-conditioning engineering and I learnt how to fly. I became very good at both. By twenty four I had my pilots license, was married to Jeni (and still am) and together we had a beautiful daughter Jess. By my early thirties I had built a successful contracting concern, owned a number of aircraft, residential and industrial properties but it was not to last. Come 1995 my business was failing, largely due to BEE policies that denied my company opportunities to participate in state and corporate work as I had always done. This proved to be a blessing in disguise when we relocated to lush Knysna where we had bought a piece of paradise (Peace of Eden) some years earlier.

Knysna rekindled my passion in nature, it was as if I had found a long lost friend. One thing led to another and on the encouragement of friends and family I started field guiding, sharing my knowledge and special interests in ornithology (birds), entomology (insects and arachnids) and mycology (mushrooms and other fungi). My interests in music found a home too because at that time Knysna was musically vibrant, with lots of clubs and active bands and it wasn’t long before I had a successful recording studio up and running on our farm.

And so it has been for more than a decade now. These days I manage to find a balance pursuing all my interests, wearing a number of different hats so to speak. I still fly regularly for a number of different skydiving clubs, which I enjoy immensely, and my recording studio publishes ten albums a year on average. I’m fortunate to work with, and have a hand in the success of some of SA’s greatest artists and even a few from abroad. To date my productions have garnered thirteen nominations and four wins in the South African Music Awards (SAMAs).
But how does this all stitch together and benefit a field guide? It does so remarkably well; For example a knowledge of acoustics and how sound propagates helps unravel how elephants and other animals are able to communicate infra-sonically, similarly it helps me understand why the nestlings of certain birds will call with near pure tone, making their position indiscernible, while others don’t. Flying gave me an understanding of how and why the Coriolis effect determines the clockwise and anticlockwise growth of vines in the northern and southern hemispheres respectively, something you won’t read in a book!

All this integrated knowledge comes together and is bundled into my guiding excursion that can be booked at www.walkwild.co.za