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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 […]

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 […]

Finding “Your Needed Birds” – my suggestions after eighteen years of Tanzania birding Udzungwa Forest Partridge (EN) this mountain forest chicken, kuku in Kiswahili, is very difficult to get on your list, as it requires a dedicated forest tramp and camping trip; please note it’s a tough walk in, and they are super skulkers Rubeho […]

‘Bio’ for James Wolstencroft British by birth, James Wolstencroft made his first long haul trip to the tropics, to Malaysia, in 1969. Immediately he was hooked! His first East African safari was in 1976 whilst a student at Cambridge. Fifty years of full time searching for birds (and other creatures) has carried him around Europe, […]

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 “ruby-face” a wintering Red-throated Pipit (whom we discovered only yesterday), nevertheless we were treated to a feast of sumptuous winter bird sightings. And there were […]

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 […]