With Mrs P’s help, I went out for my first short trip since the ATI (Achilles Tendon Injury). I’ve been following the hospital advice to the letter and have kept the leg elevated 95% of the time. The first week was really painful and I had to resort to taking Ibrobrufen painkillers. The second week was better although I started to really get frustrated that I couldn’t get out and about. The foot has been plastered so that the toes are pointing to the ground therefore I can’t put any weight on it even if I wanted to. I can go short distances on the crutches but then the injured foot starts to ache as the fluids move to the injured area.

It was just a wonderful day. Not merely because the temperature was 15C; nor that the goat willow was out; nor that the woods were filled with the sound of birds building their nests. No. All that was secondary to the fact that I was out and I was witnessing it first hand.

I don’t know what I expected but I assumed spring was in full swing. It was in many ways, but apart from the odd spurt of nettle, the odd outcrop of bitter arum lily leaves and the aforementioned goat willow, there wasn’t the carpet of green I expected. Mind you, I was only in the local woods (Park woods) and there’s not a great amount of ground flowering plants.

It was a different matter in the trees. The rooks were shouting the odds and if there was any aural indication of spring, this was it. Normally they would be foraging in the nearby fields. Now they were squabbling at the top of the trees, building their nests of long twigs. In my euphoria to be out in the woods, even their constant squawking was acceptable.

The sounds of the rooks were often inter-dispersed with the sound of the green woodpecker or “Yaffler” as it’s known in these parts.  Its laughing call was a mocking challenge to try to locate them in amongst the tree. Only occasional glimpses of green and red were seen. The more common smaller birds were coming uncommonly close. The inquisitive robin, blue tits and great tits chattering excitedly.  I was pleased to capture an elusive wren. Normally they don’t stay in one place long enough to focus on them. I realised the reason for the sudden company. A sparrowhawk swept silently at speed across the woods at head height; once from north to south and then back again.

I rigged my hammock, opened a flask of coffee and lapped up the warmth of the sun. I had plans and a rucksack full of tools. I decided to soak up the sun instead. It wasn’t long until I was asleep.

The woods were still soaked from recent rains. Being a run off for the fields, they were also still quite flooded. Unfortunately the Aircast boot I was wearing is not in any way waterproof, which restricted me to the drier west side of the woods. But enough was enough for today. I took my time walking out of the woods grateful that I had brought the crutches for additional support. I saw old fox, badger and muntjac tracks. Yes, it was just a wonderful day.

For the last 8 days I’ve been in the beautiful country of Portugal. Although I wasn’t as mobile as I wished, I did manage to see quite a bit of the countryside by going on a standard day’s jeep and boat tour with a guide.

The guide, Jose (they pronounce the “J’s” in Portugal) was the Portuguese version of Bill Oddy, but much more entertaining. He also had an excellent knowledge of the wild plants and what you could do with them.

The first area we visited was a natural salt marsh where hundreds of migrating birds can be seen at the right time of year. We spotted Great flamingoes feeding in the shallows.

Storks took every opportunity to occupy any available chimney or tall structure. Being protected, it was odd to see unused pylons and chimneys in the middle of nowhere with just a nest perched on top.

More common birds seen were hundreds of Goldfinches, Swallows and Azure-winged Magpies (above) which is endemic to the Iberian peninsula. I had a fleeting glimpse of a Hoopoe but couldn’t get a picture.

As you can imagine the further we got inland, the more plants were evident. Rural produce consisted of the citrus fruits, figs, olives, almonds, grapes and the carob bean. ..

… which are grown and farmed on the hills. The dried seed pods taste like chocolate and are used as a sweetener and chocolate substitute. They actually taste delicious when dried.

At this time of year you’ll find these white rock roses everywhere.

Cork trees can be hundreds of years old and the bark is harvested only every 30 – 40 years.

Don’t you just hate it when people get hold of your camera!

Marsh Frogs (Rana ridibunda) were very vocal at this time of year. You can get them in the UK but only in Kent and Sussex.

The trip finished on a boat travelling south along the River Guadiana, which splits Portugal (on the right) and Spain (on the left).

The Portuguese boat captain allegedly loves to wind up the Spanish by meandering close to the Spanish side. I didn’t see anyone protest.

We scoffed down quite a few of these freshly caught and barbequed sardines.

If you ever come across this wine – don’t drink it! It tastes evil… until the 6th glass!

Hope you’re having a good Easter break.

Pablo.

There’s just too much going on at the moment. It’s difficult to keep up with it all. I spent hours in Broaks wood just wandering along slowly trying to take everything in.

Greater Stitchwort.

Speckled wood butterfly. I also saw small cabbage whites, brimstones and orange tips.

The ponds are busy as well.

I think this is a recently hatched small red damselfly

I haven’t seen yellow archangel for a long time.

The show of bluebells never disappoint

They are iconic British woodland flowers

Why not show them off?

Wood avens or Herb Bennet, Wild strawberry, Bugle, Gorse, Herb Robert were all there as well.

Bird life was a little more difficult to see although I did catch a glimpse at a Nuthatch and I even saw a Swallow fly over.

My super-hearing detected a sound of movement in the leaf litter as I was watching the newts in a pond and I just managed to see a dark brown shape of a vole.

I also caught a glimpse of a Muntjac.

I followed the tracks and crotties for a while but lost them in amongst the undergrowth. There were some tiny tracks amongst them undoubtedy this years fawns but I didn’t see any.

Rain is forecast all next week. Who cares when the weekend is like this?

Thanks for the visit.

As I suggested, over the last month or so I’ve been busy filming spring in the woodlands around and about where I live.

I’ve enjoyed my new found freedom by occasionally taking off my aircast and I have been limping about the woods pointing the camera shakily at everything that moves.

I’ve put up the compilation of the footage on my YouTube channel (have look if you haven’t been there before).

If you don’t want to go to the channel, you can view the video footage below. It’s about 5 minutes long. By the way, this is the first footage in something called High Definition so I hope you enjoy it. If your connection is too slow, you can view it without HD by clicking on the HD button.

Pablo.

With the promise of a much needed down-pour, I decided to stay around the cave this weekend and not go to the woods. Mrs P christened it the cave because it’s so cold in winter and (allegedly) I’m too mean to put the heating on.

I wandered over to the badger sett on Saturday morning and trimmed back the undergrowth. I wondered how the badgers would react but I thought I would try. The trouble is, if I left it there’s no way I would be able to see them until the autumn. I spent a little time looking around the entrance studying some of the badger hair which was there in abundance.

They certainly knew something was wrong when I went to the sett in the evening. It wasn’t until 9 o’clock when they made an appearance. The first out was the female adult. She was very skittish and kept darting back into the sett. The boar wasn’t so bothered. He came out and went straight down the embankment and started foraging in the field. A white/grey badger bottom was all that was presented to the camera!

I thought I would leave them to it. I’ll leave it for a few days until I visit again. On the way back I was distracted by the Barn owl quartering the field. I followed him for a good twenty minutes in the Land Rover, watching him work hard, flying at low level and then suddenly stopping to hover for a while over potential prey. In that time, I didn’t see him catch anything.

The much needed rain came on Sunday morning. I was determined to clean up my studio and clear the floor of camo and bushcraft kit, but I got distracted by an idea to make a small pouch for my SAK. At the moment the SAK resides in an Opinel pouch. It’s a good fit but it really needs a dangler system as it digs in when I’m wearing a backpack. I enjoyed listening to the heavy rain whilst working away on the leather.

It wasn’t long until I’d knocked something up. I wasn’t too pleased about the embossing, but it’s at least functional.

Mmmmm… I still didn’t get round to cleaning my room!

Thanks for the visit.

After Mrs P left the woods it was time to get down to some serious ‘shrafting. Well, serious discussion, handling, testing, sharpening, comparison and chopping. In short it was kukri time!

Regular readers will know that I bought a custom AngPana kukri from kukuri house in Nepal and I was keen to compare this to other kukris. In fact this weekend could have been dubbed a kukri weekend. There were more kukuris present than people!

We were lucky to have Mark (a regular kukuri user) and Adam who has recently returned from Nepal where he actually visited www.kukurihouseonline.com (and came away with a few bargains – surprise, surprise).

I spent a lot of the time under Mark’s guidance profiling my 8 inch custom kukuri, so that it was more even along the length of the blade. All I have to do now is hone it a little more to a good edge. I did learn a lot about profiling on the way.

Adam was kind enough to assist with a video comparing a number of kukris (also thanks to Andy for the camera work). Part one is on my YouTube channel (also below). The out-takes were hilarious but I’m saving that for a Christmas special  The video camera also captured Jon’s first foray into a hammock dwelling… and a very ungraceful exit as he fell out of it!!

As dusk fell Nick, Andy and I went in search of the Nighjar that can only have made the distant churring noise heard the evening before.

Nightjar – RSPB website

We arrived at what we thought was a good area. A piece of open conifer land with open ground at both sides. It wasn’t long before we heard the weird and slightly eerie churring sound that could only be the Nightjar. It was only a few yards in front of us.

Please wait until audio streams

A whistling keeewick, not unlike a Tawny owl, meant that the Nightjar was in flight and low and behold, silhouetted against the darkening sky, was its bat like, erratic flight.

We watched their aerial acrobatics for quite a while as they dived, swooped and dropped on their insect prey sometimes flying at head height within a few feet of our noses as we walked along the path. I counted four in the same area. The most I’ve ever seen at one time.

It was a spectacular end to a great weekend. Once again, thanks to Mark and everyone else.

Thanks for the visit,

Pablo

Last week, I took a couple of members of the local wildlife group out to see the badgers. at first we only managed to get a sighting of a furry grey back but we were luckier later as an inquisitive stripy face came into view to check us out. This is unusual behaviour but I was delighted for the pair of wildlife enthusiasts who had waited patiently (and unusually in silence) for an hour. It wasn’t a long encounter but the pair were beaming as we walked back to the car.

On the way back, I spotted the barn owl quartering the field. I asked the crew to get out of the car when I stopped. I was taking a chance to try and get the owl to swoop low over us. I had done this before with a squeak to reasonable effect, but I didn’t hold up that much hope for a repeat performance.

I had a large, cumbersome, hand held torch and my video camera and I was struggling to operate it all plus the car. We were bouncing across the newly harvested hard ground which didn’t help matters. When I thought I was close enough to the owl, I stopped the car and we all jumped out.

I switched on the torch and switched the video onto record (with my tongue) as the owl annoyingly started to fly away from us. I did my squeak and amazingly we saw the owl turn and head back towards us as I continued squeaking (perhaps a bit too long in my excitement). At first the owl hovered directly over us for a few seconds and then did a couple of low-level passes.

It was an amazing experience for me let alone the two wildlife group members who had never had close encounters with wildlife in their lives, let alone two in one night! The footage is a little rough but I think it conveys the excitement the evening.

Thanks for the visit.

It was hard to believe that this was in fact Southern Africa. It wasn’t Longleat or Marwell Safari or Zoological Parks. What I was seeing were free-roaming animals in their native environment. A dream of mine since I was a kid.

Of course in some cases they weren’t going to be easy to spot, and in some cases they would be too far away. In one case I wouldn’t see any at all.

The first thing that struck me was the natural camouflage. Just take a look at the background behind this Plains zebra. Every animal had some method of blending into the environment.

The most common animal had to be the zebra. We saw two types; the plains zebra with it’s shadow stripes and the mountain zebra with no shadow stripes and a white underbelly.

As we traversed along the southern edge of the dried up Etosha pan, we came across more elephant and giraffe, particularly at the regular waterholes.

What makes this area so interesting is that in the dry season, the waterholes attract more of the animals making them easier to see. The waterholes (when not already dried up themselves) are also visited by a large variety of birds including these young flamingos and cattle egret and birds of prey like the tawny eagle.

The various species of antelope appeared quite accustomed to the presence of the vehicle. Springbok, Steenbok, Kudu and Gemsbok were amongst the most common species, but I did see a dik-dik and an eland - the world’s largest antelope.

A spotted hyena wandered nonchalantly in front of the Land Cruiser, while in the distance, a black-backed jackal was leading two of the hyena’s mates away from what might have been a den.

It wasn’t until we visited the floodlit waterhole of Halali that I saw the piece de resistance – an uncommon sighting of a leopard who had sneaked to the back of the waterhole under cover of dusk. I held my breath as I struggled to make out the spotted outline, crouched and eagerly lapping up the water.

The single light over the waterhole couldn’t improve the quality of the picture and I was left with this darkened image, which even so, shows distinctly that it is indeed a leopard (as if I wanted any more proof). I’ve fiddled about with the pic as much as I dare. You may have to enlarge the picture to see it.

Unfortunately, the other big cats remained elusive with a fleeting glimpse of a female lion and no sighting of a cheetah at all.

A Rhino wandered up to the waterhole on a couple of occasions for some light refreshment. This seemingly gentle giant captured my imagination and either another or the same animal and a mate endeared themsleves to me as they playfully locked horns face to face in the dusk and grunted some unknown language to each other.

Liazrds and other reptiles were another thing entirely. The Namibian rock agami provided entertainment as he picked flies off our heads…

..and a chameleon was picked up from the middle a dusty road…

This Rock hyrax seemed to enjoy my presence as we shared the early morning warmth of the sun near the top of a Kopje at Hobatere.

As suggested in my last post, I often had to choose between photographing a mammal or a bird and I’m afraid the mammals one hands down, but I managed to snap a couple of the feathered species including this red-beaked Francolin, the inevitable ostrich, an orange-beaked Hornbill, Glossy starling and re-eyed bul-bul.

Next Namibia post – The Bushmen.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.