Rondevlei Nature Reserve

This guide to Rondevlei Nature Reserve follows two men who shaped this fenced Cape Town wetland over half a century: Ernest Middlemiss, the reserve's first warden from 1952, who kept the public out under a strict philosophy of protecting birds from people, and John Hartnick, who joined as a laborer in 1964 and taught himself to read the reserve's birds well enough to later train university researchers. It also traces the hippos released into the vlei in 1981, brought in to graze down an invasive grass choking the shoreline. Listen for the reeds and fence line that staff still tend every morning.