When travel agents with Tanzania in mind speak of “The South” they usually mean to invoke the wildlife attractions of what is known as the Southern Circuit. Nature reserves that lie alongside a one thousand mile artery that delves deep from the ocean, far into the darkness at the heart of Central Africa. This aorta has been named the Tan-Zam highway, more accurately it’s a […]
“As one brown patch on a blue globe Africa is a rather dry island where white vapours off the surrounding seas shed their rain rather sparingly.” So wrote that incomparable African naturalist Jonathan Kingdon in Island Africa in 1990. Climatic stability in Africa has always been a great rarity; preserved chiefly in broken necklaces of ancient mountain gems scattered […]
A day in Arusha National Park will cost you, and your best friend, one hundred dollars. At least that’s the entrance fee for two “non-citizens”, i.e. for a couple of foreign non-resident adults plus car and driver, assuming that’s what you are. Yet assuming that you’re traveling in a local hire car with a local driver. And it’s for […]
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Birding Around Arusha
“Anyone with the slightest interest in bird life whether they be living here or just visiting Tanzania is indeed fortunate. For in Tanzania there are birds literally everywhere.” From the icy barrens around Kilimanjaro’s snowy summit to the sun-baked soda flats of Lake Natron. From coral reefs and islets in the incredibly blue Indian Ocean, to […]
At nightfall on December 12, 2006 our blue Land Rover 90 with her five human occupants might have been seen by satellites of Google Earth scurrying west toward the little town of Same (pronounced Saamay) which is midway on the main road that joins Dar es Salaam, at the Indian Ocean, with Nairobi high on Africa’s […]
Looking back from today, at the ripe old age of 58, clearly I see that two interwoven themes have dominated and directed my birding life. Firstly a loathing of being indoors during daylight hours and secondly the overwhelming desire to live as free as a bird. In particular fulfilling the wish to travel south and […]
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 […]
It could be said some Eco-tourists come to ‘Tanganyika’ as pilgrims in the hope of finding answers when they bird among the beasts. Others come to snap-up memories, smuggled home in boxes, to rerun across these flickering screens until that last of days. Whichever, we bear witness to what is arguably the greatest wildlife experience […]
It began in January 1983, six months after my return from a second sojourn in India, determined to recuperate my health before venturing abroad again. I became what one might call a committed yet, due to pressure of work, often only seasonal, Wildlife Gardener. That year brought the first of many seasons studying succession in an ancient deciduous woodland. Creating clearings, largely for beautiful butterflies, on […]
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Who am I? What am I?
“It seems that I’ve been a naturalist, a bird-watcher, a conservationist and a ‘dedicated birder’ for almost all my fifty-eight years. Definitely my first BIG love was BIRDS. Over the years I’ve grown to greatly admire, if not envy, all flying creatures no matter their size, more especially those who undertake epic migrations across this […]
Vagrant Mind 