Dawn slowly silhouetted the island’s imposing trees, especially a huge sycamore fig and a rain tree. A clamorous spurfowl took over from a fiery necked nightjar enquiring, in a querulous voice, ‘Did sleep deliver us?’ After breakfast we went for a walk and Peter maintained a worried lok because he could smell buffalo.
I made a discovery. The party were mostly birders. So it was five steps, scope, discussion, ID, five steps, scope. Discussion. I like birds. You know, they’re nice, but…. With plenty of time on my hands I took to imagining what the birds were saying to us. I decided the mourning dove was really a dove of peace, calling pleadingly ‘No more war’. A black-crowned tsagra was the mournful one, saying ‘I’m not cheerful. I’m not cheerful’.
Eventualy after much scoping and discussion we packed up and set off through reeds – miscanthus and phragmites – which rained spiders. It kind of went on for an awfully long time. ‘Why the reeds when there’s the Boro River nearby?’ I asked Julius, who was doing the guiding. ‘The channels belong to the hippos,’ he replied. So it was spiders or hippos.
You may also like
Related Posts
From Cape Town to the legendary Van Zyl's Pass - here's how to do the...
read more
Into the Okavango is now in the last days of an incredible four-month, 2250km...
read more
Follow internationally renowned street artist, Falko as he road-trips around SA, painting the dorpies as...
read more
