The Rose-coloured Starling or Rosy Starling is a bird that breeds in Asia, apparently in vast numbers. From time to time, instead of migrating south too the Indian sub-continent to spend the winter, the odd one migrates in the wrong direction and finishes up, totally lost in Europe and even the UK. One such lonely […]
Category: Wildlife
Dog Day Afternoon…
From the moment my light aircraft touched down in the Okavango Delta I could feel it was going to be a hot one. The temperature approached the 100 degree mark and the wind was still. And yet the news that greeted me was fantastic. A pack of sixteen dogs had just entered the area, the […]
Ice Age bowhead whales’ survival surprises scientists
Ancient DNA shows that bowhead whales bucked the trend to survive the last Ice Age, say scientists. The demise of cold-adapted land mammals such as mammoths has been linked to rising temperatures around 11,000 years ago. But researchers were surprised to find a contrasting population boom for whales living off the coast of Britain. Their […]
Brakend Tureluurtje
Tijdens de ritjes uit mijn vorige blog kwam ik de Tureluur van bovenstaande foto tegen. Deze Tureluur ging niet al te ver weg zitten van de auto en was daar een poosje aan het graven en vissen in het slootje naast het weiland. Echter op een gegeven ogenblik begon de Tureluur een soort kokhalsneigingen te […]
Borakalalo National Park – Where rhinos no longer roam
I spent the weekend walking in one of my favourite spots in this country, Borakalalo NP. Situated in South Africa’s North West province this accessible and well-known jewel has, until recently, been a haven for birds and animals alike. Even so, rhino poaching and other isolated incidents of baseless brutality and the proliferation of wire-snares […]
The Wild Ponies Of Chincoteague Island, VA
I had the privilege of visiting Chincoteague Island and Assateague Island, in Virginia, during mid-February ’13. Chincoteague is a quaint, friendly town and Assateague Island was abundant with wildlife. I had my sights set on finding the famous Chincoteague Ponies, known worldwide for the pony swim and penning that occurs yearly on the last Wednesday […]
Central Florida Birding, 4/6/2013
This morning my son had a 9am appointment in Sanford, and I had a work obligation in Orlando at 2pm. Not wanting to risk something going wrong, I decided to stay local and bird my way from Sanford to Orlando. I first went to Spring Hammock Preserve, hoping for a Prothonotary Warbler and Northern Waterthrush. […]
Has WWF just condemned the last rhino in Kalimantan?
WWF-Indonesia recently caught the attention of the global media with their announcement that the Sumatran rhinoceros still exists in Indonesian Borneo, some 40 years after being declared extinct there. This sounds like great news for biodiversity conservation. But is it really? Sumatran rhinos were once wide-spread in South-East Asia, but poaching for their horn decimated […]