Nature and Wildlife

One of the joys of travelling for me is to explore the weird and wonderful nature and wildlife to be found around our beautiful planet. I’m especially fond of our feathered friends and have been lucky enough to watch and photograph birds in locations as varied as the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, the Cloud Forests of Costa Rica, Amazonian Ecuador and various sewage works around the world. Yes, birds tend to like sewage works…

Nature and Wildlife – About Me

Here in the UK, I’ve embraced a bit of twitching over the past decade (barring the Covid years, naturally). Armed with the excellent Birdguides app, I’m often ready to dash off at short notice to catch a glimpse of rare birds when they appear on these shores, accompanied by my trusty Canon R5 and my ridiculously large 600mm lens. My nature and wildlife photography has featured in half a dozen different magazines.

My Last Birding Trip

I recently visited Sao Tome & Principe with Birding Africa. These tiny islands in the Gulf of Guinea are a nature and wildlife paradise, with their isolated location giving them a ridiculous number of endemic species, and the nickname The Galapagos of Africa. I was specifically interested in one of them, a type of owl, the Principe Scops Owl. As its name suggests, it is only found on one island, and has such a small range, it wasn’t discovered until 2016, and only described by science in 2021. It required a tough (for me) hike through the forest in pitch darkness to reach the area. It looked for a while as though we wouldn’t see it, but then it flew into a tree above where we stood and glared down at us.