MARK OLIVAREZ

The 'nest custodians' protecting a toddler-sized bird

it was a dusty afternoon at the end of a long dry season, and Zimbabwean subsistence farmer Sofaya Ndlovu was sitting in the sun outside his home. Fifty metres away, between the clean-swept earth of his homestead and a small koppie (a hill in a flat area) of granite boulders, a ragged black bird with a puckered red face, long eyelashes and a voluptuous red wattle strutted over tufts of grass.