David Petrus Johannes Odendaal, son of Willem Notling
Odendaal and his wife Hester Sophia van den Berg, moved to the Chipinge District, Southern
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1894 with his father as part of the Mynhardt trek.
They settled on Houtberg farm at Mt Selinda in 1895, where a few years later
young Odendaal was able to share his interest in natural history with C.F.M. Swynnerton*. He was mainly interested in ornithology, collected birds and their nests,
and trapped birds for Swynnerton to experiment with in aviaries. He contributed his field notes to a paper by Swynnerton entitled 'On
some nests and eggs from Mount Cirinda, Southern Rhodesia' (Journal of the South African Orinithologists'
Union, 1911, Vol. 7(1), pp. 1-20).
At about this time Odendaal settled on the farm Grassflats
and married Susanna Maria Olwage, with whom he had a son and a daughter. From
this time his ornithological activities declined. Later he moved to the farm
Chipinge West. In later life he was a member of the Ebenhaezer Committee, which
was responsible for the erection of a memorial to the Moodie and other early
treks to the eastern parts of Zimbabwe.
