The person with the greatest exposure to the needs of foreign birders and those of other serious ecotourists in the mountains of Northern Tanzania is Martin Joho. A resident of Muheza Martin is a well known face in and around Amani as well as at the lodges and forest reserves above Lushoto. Everyone there seems […]
Tour Narrative – Tanzania November 2019 The unique Sunbird-Wings Safari Birding Route has evolved over nine years to become what this ‘Designer Naturalist’ feels is a succinct introduction to the ecological wonder land of northern Tanzania. Here’s my tour report from 2019: And thus we started our November tour this year (2019), as has become […]
Tour report : Ecotourism Safari in Tanzania with James Wolstencroft – Ngorongoro Crater, Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti, Tarangire, the Great Rift Valley : Just being there is often enough, the powerful experiences in unique locations, where Wild Nature and Cultures Converge. It could be said some Eco-tourists come to ‘Tanganyika’ as pilgrims in the hope of […]
For the tour operator Tanzania remains a unique and challenging destination. The more so because world travellers hope to find here a savanna Africa of their dreams. Yet with a little luck a well-planned safari here really should become that “holiday of a lifetime”. A safari here is always going to be expensive, on account […]
A sweet and healthy spot at a freshwater spring on an olive-studded yellow hillside in Andalucia. It’s nine in the morning, an east wind blows off the nearby craggy grey wall of the Serra del Turco. I am sheltered from the wind and shaded from the brilliant morning sun by a clump of old gumtrees. […]
Part One: How it began, a life project to become re-immersed and, by the same token, a way out via open domestic wildness. I became a ‘rewilder’ in June 1967, aged eleven. Molly, my maternal aunt, helped me by driving us to a disused limestone quarry at Trow-Barrow in Silverdale, North Lancashire, England. Here there […]
Shortly after sunset yesterday three bird brains here got vixenated. In the twilight of June’s quarter waxing moon, after a wait of sixteen years, I became properly reacquainted with the Red-necked Nightjar. Andalusia’s “Chotacabra pardo”. And we were introduced by a familiar fox. I first heard the Nightjar from the bed, for he was close. […]
Moments out of time, immersed in Nature Natural companions in the poztho field … June 12, 2021 There hasn’t been a Blackbird around the crumbles, where we live, since late December. That was when our ‘wintering’ birds departed, presumably to establish breeding domains in the neighbouring dehesa (here that is wild olive savanna). Only yesterday […]
It’s streaming swifts! “ Birder’s Log: Sunday May 5, 2013 0950 until 1250 GMT Have you been hoping for some Vis-Mig in Africa? Yes indeed! A Sunday morning. So admittedly I came somewhat late, scrambling and occasionally stumbling, to the ridge line in the clear, above and far beyond – The Mine. I am an […]
Sunday March 14, 2021 Eighteenth Anniversary of ‘Snake-Eagle Down’ at the Isla de Tarifa on 14/03/2003. In the bright light of spring there are patterns of process, virtually unseen, glimpsed across the sky.A dry and sunny day. Only a week ago, the deluge. Today, there’s scarcely a breeze under a super blue sky. Life is […]
Vagrant Mind 