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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Vagrant Mind 