This essay was a “Birdman” first, posted in 2006 and entitled: “Mes Amis Amur” A thunderous tropical rain storm was arriving, most unusually out of the north. A tsunami of cloud breaking against the great black massifs of Mount Meru and Kilimanjaro in the early hours of November 23, 2006. Shortly after daybreak Dismus […]
Our mission To create a little biobank for the future. Here at Noah’s plot in Ferryden of Forfarshire on the coast of eastern Scotland. And by the way, I’m no Noah but I know what Noah was doing. (Thankfully) I cannot be here all the time, in our boreal winters, to provide the brought-in and […]
Categories
An inside-out Aviary
At six, a thick sea fog envelops Scurdie Ness. I can see barely one hundred yards from my seat at the window. Only House Sparrows, so far, enliven the little garden. Animating the yard of my Inside-Out Aviary. Occupying one quarter of an acre, at most, this is a very small rectangle of Rewild-able ground […]
Categories
Once upon a time in Tanzania
The pictures in this post were taken in Tanzania in the “late cool-dry” of September and early October.The middle of October usually heralds the end of the long, cool, dry. The time when northern Tanzania gratefully receives its first showers of rain after four months of drought. Therefore this is one time of the year […]
A morning discipline of observation, contemplation and/or meditation if only for an hour or two – without any electronic stimulation of our brain – has become increasingly rare in the debilitated digital environment of our times. But don’t despair! Why not watch some Birds? Warning: eBirders perhaps you should look away now! You see there’s […]
Categories
Ghost Birding Up Memory Lane
Monday, March 10, 2003 WMD: Snake-Eagle Down! Foreword: Just as now, in the ongoing “Black & Baltic Seas” War, in 2003 our family was based at Tarifa, a maritime choke point known as The Strait of Gibraltar. Gibraltar is Djebel (Jebel) Tariq, the northern pillar and Djebel Mousa the southern one of the fabled Pillars […]
Last Saturday was a perfect one in which to be alive and ‘free’ in a wonderful Al-Andalus. In the new moon of February, at the birth of the Ox Year, our first flock of migrant raptors crossed over ‘our farm’. Their line stitched for a few moments into a sky of immaculate blue. Moments out […]
The wonderful yet under-resourced African Bird Club seems to be based, for predictable historical reasons, out of computers in the flat of England. When I lived in The Seychelles I paid to become a founder member, thirty years ago. It has, or perhaps we could say is, a good website. Most of all it has […]
In late August 2022 I was privileged to be able to spend a long weekend at Kiboko Lodge, on Ngurdoto Village land, nestled on the edge of Arusha National Park, in Tanzania. You can find a full bird list, if you need it, somewhere on eBird. Checking my note book I see that a total […]
Vagrant Mind 