Splendid living with a bird's eye view
THE veranda at Kingfisher Country House sets the tone.
It's wide and gracious, running the full length of the house, with each guest room opening out onto it – an oasis of cool in the summer heat, like the day we arrived.
It's also the perfect setting for proprietor Sue Millard's sumptuous early morning breakfasts and a cozy shelter from the rain.
It's raised a level above the garden and a wild elder tree rises up from below and presses in against the balustrade so you can sit on the veranda and look straight into the branches and watch the birds.
Birds are a special attraction at Kingfisher and as a listed venue on the South African birding route it receives visitors from all over the world (a party from Ecuador has just been).
Wilderness is itself a birding hotspot with 256 species recorded and from Kingfisher's veranda, in just an hour, 34 have been counted. These include four kinds of sunbirds (amethyst, greater double-collared, grey and southern doublecollared), the African paradise flycatcher, chorister robin, brown-hooded kingfisher and olive, and Knysna woodpeckers. The Knysna turaco is there with his dramatic eyeliner like he's just hopped off the stage. I watched a male swee waxbill (a little finch with a black and red two-tone bill) doing a comical puff-ball display, which it seems, surprised even the experts who had never seen it before. At Kingfisher it's revealed because you're so close. That evening Sue served up over the edge of the veranda her usual treat of chopped up brown bread and apple.
Rednecked spurfowl and little striped field mice appeared and tucked in together.
One of the other magical features at Kingfisher is an old English inglenook, a recess which allows you to sit inside the fireplace, just right for those winter evenings with a wet southwester howling outside.
Sue remembered it from one of the books she read to her children and they insisted on it being included in their plans when she and her husband Phil built their B&B 18 years ago.
