Birds in Malawi

The current BBC programme Earthflight is stunning (though not quite as innovative as I had thought it was going to be). It focuses on birds across the world and much of the filming is made using cameras strapped onto birds backs. The latest episode focussed on Africa (if you're in the UK, you cansee the programme again here.)

I recently blogged a little about the birds that visited my garden in Malawi, here and this TV programme brought even more memories to the fore.

One of the most stunning sequences in the programme shows the migration of the white stork up Lake Malawi. This is something that I remember seeing myself one year. We were sitting by the lakeshore, and suddenly seemingly out of nowhere a huge flock of large white and black birds flew from the southern end of the lake up towards the north. I watched them in total amazement, I didn't know at the time what they were, it was only watching Earthflight that I think I finally realised what the birds had been. But it was certainly one of those unforgettable experiences, where the name of the species is quite frankly irrelevant.

One other particularly memorable birding moment from Malawi is when I took the school wildlife club down to the weaver bird colony. The students were mesmerised by the male birds who were hanging underneath the nests, whirling round, shaking their wings.

"So the best dancer get's the prettiest girl then?" said one of the students.

I adapted this scene and transferred it to Zimbabwe and it became a scene in my short story Safari Blessings, which you can read here.

The other birds that made a particularly strong impression were the fish eagles who nested on a tree behind our house - a totally awesome bird to have on your garden bird list! There were pied kingfishers that constantly hovered over the lake, whenever I was there (and I was there a lot as I lived just overlooking the lake - you can see my drawing of a pied kingfisher over the lake here.) Around where I lived andon my travels through Malaiw, I also wonderful selection of smaller birds, various sunbirds, various finches, a hoopoe and some rollers once too.

I visited Botswana and Zimbabwe too, where one of the most memorable birding sights was seeing a secretary bird making a nest.

Cat on the Prowl

The cat looked very embarrassed when it saw how many people had gathered to witness its humiliating failure to catch the woodpigeon....

Reusable Cloth Carrier Bags

I posted recently about the negative impact of plastic waste on the environment. So I thought I would repost these photos of two of my reusable carrier bags, which I originally posted three years ago. The bag above was a gift from my sister and is particularly sturdy, ideal for carrying books. The bag below was given to me at a conference in Turin a couple of years ago and is one of the two I always carry in my handbag so I never need to pick up a plastic carrier bag when I'm shopping.

Remember that bags like this do take more energy to make and transport than do plastic carrier bags. So the trick is to have just a few reusable bags and make sure you use them all the time. I reckon I've used the black carrier bag in the photo at least twice a week for the past five years. And it has several years wear still in it!

Once you have your four or five reusable bags then you shouldn't keep on accumulating more of them (for example, refuse the free cotton carrier that is given out with purchases at certain events, just as you would refuse a free plastic bag at the supermarket).

Vintage Sea by Marion McCready

Vintage Sea is the first poetry pamphlet from Marion McCready (who blogs here).


I read the book a week or so ago and flicking through now to write this review, I'm immediately drawn to Becoming Spring, which despite its title perfectly describes the type of very wet Scottish weather we've had today:


All week I am water, cloud, rain, river
Sodden skirts cling to me.


This is typical of Marion's poetry, rooted in the landscape and experience of Scotland. The poems are full of imagery and characters who remain almost at the edge of vision, not explained, just there (The Herring Girl, The Cockle Picker's Wife, the family in The Red Road.)

My favourite poem is We Met by a Charm of Crossbills and not just because it is for me the most beautiful poem in the book but because as a birdwatcher, I'm very envious of the whole experience, I've never seen even one crossbill and would love to see a whole charm of them.....

The blood birds kiss the air
as they fall from cone to cone,

their warp of mandibles
freeing the fruits, shucking the shells




Vintage Sea by Marion McCready published by Calder Wood Press.

I'm taking part in Brighton Blogger's Reading Challenge 2012.

Big Garden Birdwatch - 28/29 January 2012

I grew up in suburban Manchester and loved watching the birds in our garden. There were blackbirds, song thrushes, robins, blue tits, great tits and lots and lots of house sparrows and starlings. My parents still live in the same house and the garden is still full of birds. The species have changed though, there are now lots of goldfinches (attracted by the nyger seeds my parents put out for them) and very recently redpolls have started visiting in some number (also attracted to the nyger seeds). Also there are a lot more crows these days, including the occasional jay and lots of magpies. House sparrows have declined (as they have across most of the UK) though last time I visited, there were lots of house sparrows, I hadn't seen so many there since I was growing up. My parents always take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch, but often complain that the most interesting species don't turn up that day!


As an adult, I have mostly lived without a proper garden. When I lived in Malawi we had bougainvillea growing over our verandah and a small vegetable patch outside under a papaya tree. A fish eagle lived in a tree behind our garden and several birds visited, including a beautiful kingfisher who must have lost its way from the nearby Lake Malawi (though it wasn't a pied kingfisher, which was the prevelant lake species, in fact I never found out what species it was). Also in Malawi, though in someone else's garden, I saw the only hoopoe I've ever seen (though there was a rumour when I was a student that a hoopoe visited Edinburgh every summer).


Where we live in Edinburgh there's a pretty bush in front of the garden where a dunnock skulks, sometimes joined by a robin. Behind our building there is a shared backgreen with a vegetable plot, some well looked after gardens and some bramble patches. Some of the neighbours put out bird feeders. I've seen several species out there, robins, blue tits, song thrushes and dunnocks. One Christmas Day 50 fieldfares appeared from nowhere and took over the whole backgreen then next day had disappeared again. In summer, swifts constantly fly about over the nearby roofs.


Our backgreen has several problems from the point of view of the Big Garden Birdwatch:


a) we can't see the area from our flat
b) there's no pleasant sitting area in the backgreen
c) there's no part of the backgreen that has unrestricted views over the whole of the area
d) one of the neighbours who lives in one of the blocks that also uses the backgreen has a habit of coming out into his (very poorly looked after) garden whenever I appear and standing there, with his fierce dog, until I leave. This is off putting (to say the least!)


But if like me you don't really have a garden for the Big Garden Birdwatch, you can still join in. Just go along to your local park and record the birds you see there. It's fun, good exercise and you'll be helping the RSPB to keep up to date records of birds in the UK.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Inspired by Nature

You can read my guest post on this over on the Poetry Space blog here.

Arthur's Seat

It's an Edinburgh tradition to walk round Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags on New Year's Day. Crafty Green Boyfriend and I have joined in the tradition for several years now. Today the weather was beautifully mild, though very windy. We had a great start to our birdwatching year seeing a total of 21 species (almost twice the number we saw last New Year's Day and not bad for a wee walk round Edinburgh). One of the stars of the show was definitely the kestrel that was hovering nearby almost the whole time we were walking (though it could have been more than one in fact).


The other stars were the redpolls, a bird that I hadn't seen for years until they turned up in my parents' garden in our recent visit there and then here they were on Arthur's Seat, making a real mess as they fed on the alder catkins. You cansee the little red head patch quite nicely in this photo.

We also saw a very acrobatic crow, swooping and diving in the air, at one point flying almost upside down. It's behaviour and in fact its shape made us think it was a raven (and we know there are ravens on Arthur's Seat) but it just didn't seem big enough compared to the other crows that were around. We finally decided it must be an adolescent rook, which (I think) is more likely to indulge in aerobatic displays than is a carrion crow and is more like a raven in shape (certainly as regards the tail) than is a carrion crow. So a slight mystery there, but it was fascinating to watch.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other web-pages where you can find out more. All photos by Crafty Green Boyfriend and if you click on them you can see them in a larger size.