Zanzibar, the last leg of our safari. A place so exotic that it’s got two z’s in it. It apparently means black coast, which it most definitely wasn’t. (For the record it was mostly sparkly white, with little crabs popping up and walking sideways along the sand like they were in a ’50s Disney wildlifeContinue reading “Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 6) “Z” is for…”
Category Archives: Nature writing
Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 5) “Just so!”
People are improbable. I mean, I’ve never quite understood how something like us could have evolved. The “just so” story is that as the land got drier we adapted by swapping the ability to climb through the disappearing forest for the knack of walking upright for long distances in the blazing heat, with our expandingContinue reading “Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 5) “Just so!””
Angels unawares
It was St Paul who warned us that we might meet Angels unawares. I certainly wasn’t expecting my encounter, which happened a long time ago when I was a countryside warden. Being a countryside warden wasn’t always as idyllic a job as you might think. I reckoned that I spent a good quarter of myContinue reading “Angels unawares”
The north wind doth blow ….
I’d only seen a Waxwing a handful of times before and then only a fleeting glimpse, a dark shape silhouetted in a winter’s dusk. A few of these exquisite birds arrive in Britain every winter and every few years they grace us with a “Waxwing Winter” when they arrive in their hundreds but, either way,Continue reading “The north wind doth blow ….”
White and wild
Back in 2013, I realised an ambition and finally made a pilgrimage to a North East relic that I’ve been meaning to see for years. In fact I made two such pilgrimages that year. The first was to Durham to see the Lindisfarne Gospels which were on loan there from the British Library for threeContinue reading “White and wild”
Away with the fairies
I had always regarded a trip to Middlesbrough as being a bit like a visit to the dentist, you dread the thought of it but it usually turns out not quite as bad as you expected. More recently though, thanks mainly to my wife’s ardent defence, I’ve seen a different side to “The Boro’”. AddedContinue reading “Away with the fairies”
March Madness
There are two types of animal. There are the real ones that share the world with us and then there are the ones that live in our heads. The problem is in knowing where one ends and the other begins. Ever since cavemen drew animals on walls and probably long before then as well, peopleContinue reading “March Madness”
Shades of Grey
Blame it on our island mentality, but this country seems always to have had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with foreigners. It is probably no surprise then to learn that for a sizeable number of people in this country there is a long-standing campaign to get rid of some unwelcome Americans. Not that this should riskContinue reading “Shades of Grey”
Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 4) “I’ll take heaven for the scenery and hell for the wildlife”
I don’t recall much of the journey from Selous to Ruaha but there was no doubting that we were no longer in the same place. If Selous had seemed like the Garden of Eden, Ruaha was more like the Israelite’s soujourn in the desert. In spite of the absence of the annual “little” November rains,Continue reading “Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 4) “I’ll take heaven for the scenery and hell for the wildlife””
To see a thousand things – December
Well that felt like the quickest year of my life; perhaps seeming even quicker for documenting it on a monthly basis. December was a good month for my list with the addition of over 50 species, though most of them were technically not new species. Instead they were ones that I had just got roundContinue reading “To see a thousand things – December”
Raven on the Wing 