Fabulous few hours today, culminating with a potter round the two tone patch in the VW with Elsie. A very blustery yet bright Levantine afternoon. No sign of “our rare bricky-face” one hopefully wintering Red-throated Pipit (he was only discovered yesterday), nevertheless a real treat of sumptuous bird sightings was had. Some pure adrenaline racers […]
Or:How have benefits that accrued from international ecotourism to remote villages in the tropics, (ie ecotourism revenue from “high income economies” to the backwoods of the “Global South”) been destroyed by the lockdown response to a Coronavirus pandemic over the past year and a half?I’m talking here primarily about grass roots private ecotourism initiatives in […]
This classic nature tour has been running twice a year, in early March and in the second half of November, for ten years. Or rather it was running, prior to the Coronavirus global health crisis. As a result of that crisis Sunbird (the UK ‘wing’ of Wings) has ceased trading, so that any enquiries should […]
I wrote this article in June of 2006 immediately after participating in a film project for an Italian development NGO named Oikos. I had just returned to Arusha from a very special safari experience, a five day pilgrimage by camel, camping across Tanzanian Maasailand. Our little band of fifteen people parted with contemporary civilization (i.e. […]
An essay first written in the autumn of 2004 … Each year, even in “the same place”, my one man’s dialogue with nature is different. Not just through each changing season but during each day that is spent in the field. Each experience is unique when compared with ‘the same’ winter, spring, summer or autumn day of seasons gone by. That […]
Each autumn, of my premature retirement in the late seventies and early eighties of last century, was given-over to worshiping the gods of migration. Non-human migration that is. It was my personal homage to birds and to what I consider the most beautiful wonder of the known world – perhaps best evoked (in most birders […]
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 […]
Vagrant Mind 