Brighton Hairstreaks 11th July 2015

I planned a visit to Brighton to see my good friend John Reaney which would coincide with a visit to the Royal Pavilion, former home of The Prince Regent, and its restored gardens where a Monarch Butterfly, a very rare vagrant not normally found in northern Europe had been present for the last few days. Sadly when we got to the gardens there was no sign of it and although we waited a whole afternoon to see if it would show up it never did.

The Royal Pavilion and Gardens

Visiting the Royal Pavilion Gardens reminded me of a funny story. Years ago I lived near Brighton but worked at Heathrow Airport for a big shipping company. One Monday morning I got into work and Rob, one of the young lads from Accounts, came over to my desk. 'Here Ewan, you live near Brighton don't you?' 'Sure' I replied. 'We were down there on the weekend and saw a demon curry restaurant but we were just on our way home so we are going to give it  a try next weekend'. Curious, I asked where it was in Brighton. 'Just by the main road to the seafront. It's huge with pinnacles and minarets and all that eastern stuff. It looks really classy.' Rob blithely informed me. Then the penny dropped. 'Rob that's not a curry restaurant it's the Royal Pavilion!' Bless.

Standing around in the not unpleasant sunny surroundings of the gardens, dodging the colourful crocodile hordes of young foreign students being led by their various teachers and chaperones through the gardens to the Brighton Museum we became aware that another desirable and often elusive butterfly was sharing the gardens with us. We first noticed one feeding on some white flowers, picking its way across the delicate white blooms, probing with its proboscis as it went. So small that it could be easily overlooked and often is! It was a White Letter Hairstreak. Normally they spend virtually their entire short lives at the top of their favourite tree, the Elm, but here they were coming down to feed on the nectar in the flowerheads. 

Elms as many people are aware have been decimated for years now by Dutch Elm Disease and very few full grown Elms survive, only the regenerating saplings which once they reach a certain height of regrowth are attacked by the beetle carrying the disease and die back and so the cycle goes on. 

In Brighton a far sighted council have for many years preserved the full grown Elms in the centre of the town by treating them each year with a chemical which keeps the disease at bay.  The Elms are famous and a unique feature  of Brighton and grow in and around the Royal Pavilion gardens which doubtless accounts for the presence of the hairstreaks. 

After our initial encounter we found up to six more White Letter Hairstreaks at several locations in the gardens, all near to the Elms, feeding on various  flowers. They showed no alarm at the point blank proximity of a camera lens aimed at them but happily carried on their wanderings over the flower heads in search of sustenance.They never stopped for long, maybe ten minutes at the most and then would rapidly fly upwards in erratic flight into the trees but others arrived in their place and probably there were many more than the six we saw. 

An unexpected, welcome surprise and some consolation for missing the Monarch Butterfly.

Emperors and Admirals 9th July 2015

Nine in the morning finds me standing at the beginning of the main track through Bernwood Forest. The sun has yet to warm the forest but the clear blue sky intimates it will not be long before the air will lose its chill, dissipating in the  sun's strengthening rays.

There is a sense of tranquillity about the forest that enters my soul each time I come here. The ancient Oaks impart an air of permanence and peacefulness and seem to absorb all the problems of life into their leafy arbours.

The sun increasingly encroaches on the shadows of the trees across the track as it moves through the sky. Although I am partially shaded below, the tree tops are in full sun with butterfly and insect life well and truly active.

The main track through Bernwood Forest.This particular section is much
favoured by Purple Emperors due to the combination of Oak and Sallow

Silver Washed Fritillaries, huge and obvious, full of the sun's vitality, bright orange in the white light, bustle across the leafy stands or rest on high upon a leaf with wings open to the sun, before careering off on yet another breakneck mission. They are so frequent here that one almost but not quite dismisses them such is their abundance, but undeniably they always bring a  frisson of excitement when yet another appears in a headlong odyssey to a destination unknown. Others have found the pale pink bramble flowers at the edge of the small car park and are feasting on the nectar, forever flighty and touchy, constantly flexing their wings and ready to fly at a moment's notice, Unwilling to share a flower with any other insect, the slightest touch or intrusion causes them to zoom off, forever restless.

Silver washed Fritillary  (male)

The humble Ringlets, those plebiean lepidopteran denizens of the grass, appear drab, dreary and mundane compared to the exotic and extrovert fritillaries but are present in their dozens, flopping and flouncing in their jinking restlessness at all levels from ground to tree top. They are literally everywhere, fluttering deep in the lush stalks of the long summer grasses to spiralling high in the dark green leaves of the Oaks  as they enact their brief existence. 

Ringlet

A pale grey flickering high in the trees, moving dizzyingly fast and erratically is not a wind blown scrap of leaf but resolves itself into a Purple Hairstreak, delicate and paper thin it ceases its flight and clings to an oak leaf at the highest point of the tree, a tiny pale triangle just about visible, drinking in the honeydew from the leaf.

I stand in contemplation, pleasantly warm now in the middle of the morning. A dark shape careers past and behind me, to be almost dismissed as just an imaginary shadow but not quite. It is a large dark butterfly and flies strongly down the track and then returns to land by the side of the track a few feet away from me. At last. A Purple Emperor. A male, he allows me a glimpse of white bands and imperial purple on his open wings before he is away, unsatisfied with whatever he sought on the ground and disappears into the forest.

It is never commonplace to see a Purple Emperor. Unpredictable, capricious and frustrating they appear almost contemptuous of those of us that wait for them to descend from on high. And why not? For the month of July they reign supreme in the forest and bring a beauty, a regal majesty and mystique that lasts long after they have perished and left the forest somehow bereft until next summer.

Another 'Emperor' descends to the earth from its throne of leaves and remains for a minute or so. This one is huge and with no purple sheen on either wing no matter from what angle it is viewed. It is a female, so perhaps should be called an 'Empress.' Females are far more hard to see than the males and it is unusual to find one at ground level but soon she too is away and then there are no more. Some days you can sit within inches of one for a long spell as it absorbs nutrients from the ground but on other days like this they seem nervous, edgy and unsettled and will not remain still. That is the charm of them. They are never easy to see and chance plays a huge part in any success, which only adds to the attraction.

Purple Emperor

I slowly become more aware of the White Admirals which although never abundant seem to be here in greater numbers than I can recall in other years. They are the prima ballerinas of the wood, bringing an ethereal and fragile grace to the wood, buoyantly gliding the air currents on flat wings as they float through the sun dappled edge of the forest. Occasionally they delicately come to rest on a leaf but are rarely still for long. Their lives are all too short, days only and there is much to do. Procreation, the all consuming driving force of nature inexorably guides their purpose.

White Admiral

Then an aberration. Flying in low glides just above ground level along the track, stopping for seconds and then fluttering onwards with a series of short flights, interspersed with brief stops to examine the ground for nutrients or who knows what. It is a White Admiral but there are no white markings on its matt brown wings. It is a rare form of the White Admiral, colloquially called Black Admiral and the first I have ever seen. I follow its unhurried progress along the track and finally it settles on a nettle leaf long enough for me to record the moment on my camera before it flies off once more.

Black Admiral- a rare aberrant form of White Admiral in which the white on
the wings is virtually absent

It is now noon and I am forced by the strength of the sun to seek the shade at the side of the track. The Purple Emperors are enthroned high in the Oaks and it looks unlikely that they will be granting further audiences. Only the White Admirals continue their gentle quests along the wooded rides of the forest. I turn for home. It has been a good day.

It Only Seems like Yesterday 7th July 2015

European Stonechat drawn by my good friend John Reaney of Brighton

More years ago than I care to remember, maybe around thirty although it is hard to believe it can really be that long ago, I lived in a village called Ditchling, in the shadow of the Sussex South Downs and much of my free time was spent studying the stonechats that bred along the gorse topped cliffs of Beachy Head, further east in Sussex. In those days they used to be called Common Stonechats but are now European Stonechats.

I loved the times I spent at Beachy Head and was never happier. There are so many fond memories associated with 'my' stonechats such as the time I was ringing a brood of stonechats and looking up noticed a Crag Martin flying back and fore above me. I finished ringing the stonechats and then watched the martin for another twenty minutes, feeding above the grassy slope before it disappeared off to the east never to be seen again. I was completely alone at the time as it was July, a dead time for birding. My sighting of the Crag Martin turned out to be only the second ever record for Great Britain. 

Another time and another year I was lower down the same slope trying to find a stonechat's nest when a strange melodic call came from a small hawthorn. I went to investigate and a non descript greyish bird, about the size of a Greenfinch, with a few dark streaks on its breast and a beady black eye revealed itself to be the origin of the call. It flew to the next bush. It was another rare bird, a Common Rosefinch or Scarlet Grosbeak as it was in those days. Again there was no one else around to tell. 

Finally a famous pop and session musician as well as good friend, who also lived in Ditchling, asked to come one morning to share the experience of checking stonechat nests in my study area. His name was Herbie Flowers, formerly of T Rex and who played the famous base accompaniment on Lou Reed's 'Walk on the Wild Side'. That morning I learnt an awful lot about the pop music industry, its stars and gossip whilst Herbie learnt a lot about stonechats and watched me ringing a couple of broods.

I was asked to write a book about stonechats and their relatives which I eventually did and it was published in 2002 under the title 'Stonechats. A Guide to the Genus Saxicola.' The book that finally appeared was, as befitted the modern trend full of technical detail but I always regretted that it could not be allowed to be written in the relaxed style of the bird books of old. I was brought up on the likes of Walpole Bond and Bannerman who were both excellent ornithologists and capable of writing in an interesting and fluent style. They were so much more readable and to my mind just as instructive without being burdened by the now fashionable scientific approach of churning out a wealth of sterile statistics, graphs and genetics which in some cases can render the book concerned almost unreadable to the average person with an interest in birds.

Below is the preamble to the original manuscript I wrote but was considered not suitable for the book in its final form, which I completely understand but to my dying day will regret could not be included. I scribbled it down in a quiet moment as I was sitting on a steep, sunny slope at Beachy Head watching my beloved stonechats.

'On an early morning in June with the sun just two hours above the horizon I am sitting on a steep grass

 slope called Cow Gap just east of Beachy Head and where the chalk of the South Downs meets the sea. I am waiting to find a stonechat's nest which is  hidden somewhere in the rank grass further down the slope. Some hundred metres below me the slope levels out to a wide area covered in an abundance of downland flowers and that runs to the sea. A profusion of butterflies, Marbled Whites, Dark Green Fritillaries, countless Meadow Browns and Chalkhill Blues cruise and flutter over and amongst the Purple Knapweed, Yellow Rattle, Spotted and Fragrant Orchids and swaying downland grasses. The scent of Wild Thyme is carried on the warm breeze, the sea is a dull murmur on the distant shore and my arms glow yellow with reflected colour from a swathe of Horseshoe Vetch by my side.This is the haunt of the stonechat. The ghost of W.H Hudson who so loved these South Downs feels very close.

Conspicuous and resplendent on top of a small hawthorn bush, framed by the colours of  early summer flowers and  blue sea sits a male stonechat. His black busby head, white neck flashes and orange breast enhanced by the sun, handsome and bright against a backdrop of sea and sky.

Somewhere nearby his mate is sitting on a nest, deep in the downland grass, incubating red stippled pale blue eggs but it is useless to randomly search for the nest as stonechat nests are always wonderfully well concealed and as is the way of such things, that which is most desired is often the hardest to obtain or in this case to find.

I am now, from much practice, familiar with the ways of the stonechat and know that the best way to discover the nest is to be patient and wait for the female to leave her nest and appear on one of her feeding trips which usually occur every forty to sixty minutes. It is of course no hardship to sit here patient and solitary in such spiritually uplifting surroundings. I have no idea how long I will need to wait, nor does it matter but the secret is to keep a constant eye on the male as he never remains far from his incubating mate and will accompany her when she leaves the nest to feed. Time drifts by on the breeze. An Adder appears out of the gorse, winding its way through the grass below my feet as I sit silent and motionless, then coils itself sinuously into a snug grass hollow to absorb the sun. Its head rests on its coiled body. A black unlidded eye, glittering in the sun, is unfathomable. The three week old Fox cubs, yet to learn caution, are bickering and play fighting in between sunning themselves at the entrance to their Earth under a Wayfarer bush. The male stonechat maintains a vigil atop his favoured hawthorn. I keep watching him. We are both waiting.

Suddenly he becomes excited, flicking his wings and flirting his tail. I scan my binoculars some ten metres to his right and there is his mate, perched on another small hawthorn bush busily preening and shaking her feathers, a sure sign she has just left the nest. She is the epitomy of  nervous impatience as she flies a few metres at a time from perch to perch, dropping to pick prey from the ground at every stop, constantly in agitated motion. I follow her intently with my binoculars, ignoring the male. She is soon many metres away from where she first appeared but finally starts heading back in a series of longer flights between perches. It will not be long now as she is concerned for her eggs. Five, ten minutes is the longest she wants to leave them. Arriving at a small bramble spray half risen above the grass, she is edgy and alert, constantly flicking tail and wings. She looks around anxiously, furtively, a slight hesitation and then makes a sudden dive into the grass and is gone from sight. I wait for five minutes but she does not re-appear. Unknowingly she has revealed her nest but she and its contents are safe. Known only to me and after checking the nest I will return but once to disturb her and hopefully ring the young stonechats in a couple of weeks from now.

African Memories Part 2 - The Okavango Delta Botswana

Another memorable holiday trip to Africa some years ago with my wife and young daughter found us spending a few days in the watery wilderness of the Okavango Delta moving by light aircraft across the vastness of Botswana from camp to camp.

The wildlife as always was abundant and thrilling but I had one desire above all others and that was to see a Pel's Fishing Owl, a huge ginger coloured owl with eyes as black as the African night and that lives entirely on fish.

I had met other birders and guides who told me I would be extremely fortunate to see one and if I did it would probably be just briefly, usually at night and would first entail much searching without any great chance of success.

After a week in the dry savannah of the Kwai Concession we arrived at the luxury Kanana Camp situated in the heart of the Okavango Delta and I immediately asked if there was any chance of finding a Pel's Fishing Owl but was met with a sympathetic smile and a negative reply from the young couple running the Camp who seemed skilled in providing drinks, food and every other creature comfort known to man or woman but not so knowledgeable about the wildlife. 

I let matters rest for a while but undeterred decided to bypass the official route and get some local knowledge from one of the native Africans working as a guide at the camp. He told me that he knew of a pair of Pel's Fishing Owls nesting in a huge tree half an hour's boat trip from the camp but as most people visiting the camp were more interested in Lions and other big game rather than birds the camp did not really make much effort to inform visitors about the owls.

For a consideration of some US dollars we came to an 'unofficial' arrangement and the next day, making my excuses, I declined the early morning game drive and met my African friend at the dock and away we went in a motorboat, cleaving our way through the steamy humid waters, following deep mysterious channels through huge papyrus stands to eventually transfer to a small canoe and pole ourselves across a shallow lake profuse with lilies.

A channel through the Papyrus

The shallow lily lake with the owl nesting tree visible centre on the far shore

We silently glided through the clear water, scattering Greater and Lesser Jacana's before coming to rest under a huge tree by the water's edge in which the owls had their nest, containing I was told, a young owl secreted in a hole of a branch high above us. I looked up. There above me in the tree was an enormous owl, a Pel's Fishing Owl looking every bit as impressive as I had been led to believe. Its ginger plumage with wavy dark brown bars almost glowed in the dappled shade as its huge claws clamped it firmly to a stout branch. It looked down at me in that casual way owls do and its fathomless black eyes were impassive and expressionless.

We sat for over two hours in the narrow canoe, shaded from the burning sun by the tree, taking time also for a light lunch as I just enjoyed this very special time with a beautiful and mysterious owl. The only sounds were natural in this liquid tropical wilderness and an inner peace came over me as finally yet another of life's little challenges came to successful fruition.

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect an encounter such as this. A few seconds view, which was apparently more typical would have made me very happy but to have a Pel's Fishing Owl just sitting motionless for hours on end above me was almost unbelievable.

Apparently I was extremely fortunate in my timing as when  Pel's Fishing Owls are nesting and have young it is not uncommon for one of the parent owls to sit outside the nest hole guarding the young one and to show no fear at this stage in their nesting cycle. The individual owl I was looking at was the larger female, the smaller male which I also saw later but much more distantly was in another tree further away and much more circumspect about showing himself

I sat dreamily in the boat, watching the owl, luxuriating in the humid warmth, listening to the tiny frogs croaking in the lilies and inhaled the dark steamy swamp smells of the Okavango. 

The owl fiddled briefly with its breast plumage and a long ginger feather drifted slowly in the windless hot air, spiralling down to the water. I retrieved it from the water's smooth surface, a memento of this unforgettable moment in the heart of Africa.

A Surprise Visitor 1st July 2015

Brown Long eared Bat  

Today was the hottest July day in England ever, with temperatures reaching a record high. Probably like many other people, myself and my wife took advantage of this welcome visitation of a Mediterranean climate to eat alfresco in the garden this evening, as such opportunities do not arise that often in an English summer.

After the meal and a bottle of wine we retired to our living room to watch yet more episodes of The Sopranos. Sad I know but we are both hooked. Due to the continued warmth we left all the doors of our three hundred year old house open to allow what little cool air there was to flow through the ground floor of the house.

By eight thirty in the evening and with broad daylight still outside we were now well into watching The Sopranos when suddenly we found ourselves not alone. We became aware of a large brown flying shape that appeared in the living room and silently flew round the room at just above floor level then rose a few feet to repeat the process. My initial reaction  was that it was a hawk moth but it was way too big and we quickly realised it was indeed a bat. A fair sized one as well, with prominent stick up ears, pale brown fur and similarly pale brown parchment wings. We are quite familiar with bats as one of the delights of summer in our rural location is that we get bats flying around in our garden every evening but to have one venture into the house was certainly out of the ordinary.

There was no panic on our part or indeed from the bat. It was obviously hunting, quite at ease in this strange extension of its normal habitat and flew at a comparatively slow pace around the room, comprehensively examining every nook and cranny in the room as well as every piece of furniture including the television, gently twisting and turning with great agility as it did so. It made at least four or five slow, measured circuits of the room rising up to the ceiling and down to floor level. It even flew in and around the inglenook fireplace and partially up the chimney before re-emerging. Its flight was wonderfully light, controlled, acrobatic even and totally silent. Not one object in the room was touched as it flew and it never settled on anything.  We just sat on the sofa totally entranced and marvelled at our good fortune to have this unexpected treat before our very eyes in our own living room. The Sopranos on the television was for now totally forgotten.

Having completed its thorough examination of our living room, and us by the way, the bat then proceeded to make a leisurely exit from the living room and flew down the hall and into our farmhouse kitchen and repeated its minute examination of every feature there, even entering the cramped utility room but again skilfully and with consummate ease evading all the potential hazards in there. 

Unlike the occasional bird that comes down our chimney there was no wild panic and crashing into windows or objects in a bid to escape but a gracefully smooth and controlled flight that even took it behind a Welsh Dresser at almost ground level before re-emerging, and  having completed its examination of the ground floor of our house's interior to its satisfaction, departing out of the open kitchen door and back into the garden on the other side of the house.

Both myself and my wife had to pinch ourselves about what had just happened. It was all over in six or seven minutes but for that time we had been privileged to watch from our own sofa, a bat flying gently around our living room.

I checked on the internet and found that our welcome visitor was a Brown Long-eared Bat. They are reasonably common and well distributed in Britain but who cares about that. They are not so common in one's living room.

African Memories Part 1 - The Serengeti Tanzania

Both my wife and myself have over the years spent quite a lot of time in Africa either working there or visiting for pleasure. Some years ago we decided to visit Tanzania for a holiday looking at the mammals and birds of the Serengeti.

The Serengeti is rightly famed for its wildlife spectacles especially the Great Migration of Wildebeeste and Zebra. Comprising 5,700 square miles of  grassland, savannah, riverine forest and open woodland the Serengeti is a place of wonder and delight for anyone with an appreciation of the natural world and with an estimated population of one thousand Leopards as good a place as any to try and encounter this beautiful big cat.

On all our travels in Africa throughout the passing years we had seen all the famed animals of The Dark Continent; Lion, Cheetah, Leopard, Rhino, Giraffe, African Buffalo, Hippopotamus and of course Elephant. Of all of these it was the Leopard that had proved personally the most elusive for us and we could really only count two separate, fleeting and therefore unsatisfactory views of this big cat despite all our efforts.

With the abundance of wildlife, constituting both prey and predator, throughout the Serengeti we decided that this was our big opportunity and we would concentrate one whole day in trying to find a Leopard, preferably asleep in a tree so we could have prolonged views of one and finally lay our bogey to rest. I did not rate our chances too highly but we had to try.

So it was that one morning I instructed Njano our guide that today we wanted to find a Leopard. We set out from our camp in the early morning, three of us in a four wheel drive, heading into the vastness of the Serengeti. The air was still cool and the sun yet to rise. A group of Bat Eared Foxes diverted our attention as they examined the remains of a dead bird along the dirt road we were following, making their way back after a night's hunting, to their den. Possessing a high cuteness factor their sociable antics were entrancing as they ignored our presence and bounced and bickered amongst themselves, snuffling feathers and chasing after one last meal of locusts they had found in the scrub.Their ears are huge and constantly move and twitch as, like radar scanners they  pick up and assess each and every minute sound that may signal prey or danger.

We reluctantly left them and continued onwards, driving further out into the vastness of the awakening land, heading for the open woodland of Acacia trees where hopefully a Leopard was now sleeping, draped over a branch after a night's prowling.

The sun rose, which in Africa happens in minutes as we are so near to the Equator. One minute it is a deep orange orb rising above the Serengeti's horizon and then in a few minutes it is high in the sky. The heat rises exponentially and we have just  a few hours before it will be too hot to continue. By ten in the morning it is time to return to the camp, rest and sleep in the shade, allowing the heat of the day to burn on in a shimmering white light  across the plains, creating countless mirages in the heat haze.

We passed a small rise and a Lioness rested there, statuesque and haughty. We were very close and she looked directly into my eyes. A wild lion making eye contact is unnerving despite the safety of the vehicle and I instinctively looked away not relishing being the focus of this supreme predator. 

I need not have worried as after a few seconds she dismissively turned her head away as if I was of no consequence or interest. She looked into the far distance head raised. Her flanks heaved, then compressed and her neck stretched as she let out a series of roars, the sound coming from deep in her body and rising to the back of her throat from whence it was expelled and resonated across the plains. Again and again at regular intervals she roared. In between she listened intently for a response but none came.

This particular morning in our search for a Leopard we must have driven under and looked at hundreds of Acacia trees, big, small and between,  but it proved fruitless. No tail hanging down from a shaded lateral branch or dark lump prone along a bough. We gave up, with the intense heat now permeating every corner of the land and life slowed as everything sought the shade until the heat slowly died away in the late afternoon.

We returned to the camp, dusty and thirsty and after a couple of ice cold beers and a light meal slept away the heat of midday.

We rejoined Njano at four in the afternoon and once more set off out into the now cooling embrace of the Serengeti. This time we took a different route and headed for more Acacia trees but most of these were relatively small and looked hardly suitable for a Leopard. I was accustomed to thinking Leopards would seek out a big tree where they would feel more secure as I had seen this enacted on countless wildlife television programmes. We tried the largest trees but found nothing and slowly drove in a winding and haphazard route through the scattered smaller trees but our search was still fruitless.  It was now five and in another hour it would be sunset. The sun sinking as fast as it rises in this part of Africa.

Resigned to the fact we had done our very best we still had an hour and retained some forlorn hope. 

'Try over there Njano'. 

I pointed to yet another scattering of unpromising looking, spindly Acacias and we headed for them. We drove through them slowly and then came across an isolated Acacia of no consequence and sprawled like some discarded child's toy in the fork of a branch near the canopy was a Leopard.

A female, she could hardly be bothered to raise an eyelid or turn her head to register our presence. Njano turned off the engine and we sat in the evening air and whispered our excitement to each other as the Leopard lounged in the tree. There was no hurry as far as she was concerned. The sounds of Africa no longer drowned by the vehicle's engine filled the land. Strange exotic, tropical calls of birds came from far and wide accompanied by the rhythmic pulsing of cicadas.

We were well off the beaten track and entirely alone. One of the less enjoyable facets of game viewing on the Serengeti is that you are rarely left alone if other vehicles  notice you are stopped and looking at something. All the guides are keen to earn a good tip from grateful clients and know better than to ignore the opportunity to take advantage of someone else's good fortune. I do not really mind as we too have taken advantage of such situations but it is nice to have something all to yourself as then the communion between you and the animal is so much more personal and intense.

We sat for the next forty five minutes, just the three of us and the Leopard. Other vehicles passed us in the distance but failed to notice us or did not come our way, maybe assuming as we were not looking at the ground we were just having a sundowner (evening drink) and enjoying the cool of the evening. We drove closer to the Leopard, almost under the tree and she opened her eyes and yawned yet again. Casual and unafraid. Untroubled and completely at ease. She briefly shut her eyes and dozed some more but as the cooler air became more apparent soon stirred and moved position before standing up and stretching out her limbs in the familiar relaxed way of all cats great and small. The colouring and patterning of her coat was exquisite. Dull gold, lit by the waning sun, with clusters and lines of black spots from head to tail. Pale amber eyes scrutinised us as she awoke, responding to the timeless rhythms of the Serengeti.

Gradually she became more awake and attentive before delicately picking her way through the thorny branches and descending the tree head first, jumping the last few metres to the ground and landing light as a feather. 

She sat assessing her surroundings at ground level, still a little drowsy, then gently swishing her tail wandered over to some nearby vegetation and sprayed with her scent gland. Satisfied and with one more giant yawn she wandered away, a picture of insouciant ease and grace.

She came to a fallen tree trunk and stood with her forepaws on top of the trunk looking left, looking right and then, dropping from the trunk she melted into the embrace of Africa and was gone.