Monday 31st March 2014

Bruce came calling at 6.30 this morning to see if Jomi and I fancied a fitness session. My first thought was the wine I drank last night but I coped fine. It wasn’t a bad way to start the day especially as we weren’t needed to walk over the next couple of days for the advanced birding.

Seen as we got all the chores plus a few extra jobs done early on I had time to study and then in the afternoon Jomi and I headed out to collect the camera trap. Bruce had given me a good bearing to follow, “Ten o’clock of Mr BB between the two ridges”, this made perfect sense and I led the walk confidently and loved every minute of it.

The walk reminded me of why I’m here and what I’ll miss when I’m back in the UK. I was walking through the African bush, picking my own path, carrying a rifle in a wilderness area. The drainage line that we were walking was surrounded by leadwoods, apple leafs and knob thorns – simply stunning.

Despite seeing leopard and hyena tracks on the way to the camera trap site all we had caught were a few baboons and me returning to the site. We moved the trap to what looked like a more promising site, fingers crossed.