277 : Green Wood-hoopoe

Green Wood-hoopoe - Pheoniculus purpureus

Time for a quick post this morning before my daily swim. There are lots of sunbirds around the pool at the moment so its not all about exercise. I keep promising myself that I will set aside time for my blog and push it forward to 300. I seem to be getting to bed at 2 am  and starting the day at 6 am with a bunch stuff jammed into the intervening 18  hours - mostly work and work travel. I have a 2 day weekend this weekend rather than the  broken weekends of the last few weeks so hopefully I can get to sorting through a few more birds. I would like to move on from Ruaha but we are nowhere near ! It was that kind of trip.

We have just completed the family world-cup of holidays. The clear messaging from the other 3 was that I would not get away with a Safari next year. I guess thats OK - two years in a row was special and Africa will always be there...So we put the names of 32 places in a hat after a few times around the table. The destinations were varied - from Fiji (or some other South Pacific island) to Norway through to China, Costa Rica or Ireland.  A real mix bag, beaches (the Maldives) or Bavaria (that'e me - I have real thing about the Alpines in the Summer and pork based German food. I note that the Ockertoberfest has a copycat event in Dubai can you believe so I might try for that - or maybe not I find a hangover a waste of half a day these days). Anyway the world cup. The places all went in the hat and two destinations at a time were drawn with each family member (started mostly by the advocate of the place) making some kind of comment. We were aiming for 2 places for the next 18 months. 32 destinations were whittled down to 16 after round 1 with a further draw then occurring for the second round (producing 8) - the quarter finals, semi finals and thats where we stopped because of the results and the timing potentials and so on. One Northern and one Southern hemisphere place. Some real family dream holidays were ousted - New Zealand for example, Vietnam, Thailand and a return to Sri Lanka, Northern India for the tigers ! All gone in the furious debate about relative merits - not al destination based but "thats one we could knock off on a half term for example type considerations).

We ended up with Canada (interesting - Jane has a burning desire to see Vancouver and I am ignorant about the place) and Madagasacar. Now I am definitely up on the delights of the latter - lemurs, chameleons and more endemic birds than you can shake a stick at. It has a whole Attenborough narrated wildlife epic devoted to it. It split off from the super-continent a long time ago so has whole Groups of birds that are unique with one Group I think the Vangas taking up a good slew of the incumbents - descendants mutating to take up the untaken ecological niches on offer. There is even a Crossley Vanga from memory. So I think that's now looking like Canada for Summer or Autumn 2014 and Madagascar could be Spring 2014 or even Xmas 2014 - a Xmas lemur special. We have a quick sprint to  Rome booked for about 3 weeks time and we will back in the UK for this Xmas with family. As if by magic 15 months gets mapped out by a family "balloon" game holiday debate.

Green Wood-hoopoes ! All I can say is that these were another noisy inhabitant of the trees and I managed this half decent shot pretty much on our final main game drive. These are adolescents as the adults have a bright orange bill as far as I can see from text books. Other Wood-hoopoes are ruled out by the distribution maps.

Below we did score a hit with these Defassa Waterbuck which were in the wrong place on a pool at the end of a sand river - they usually stick to the far more flooded environs of the Great  Ruaha river which is has a god volume of water all year round. These deer like creatures never usually stray far from the water margins. So these were out of place and actually not an animal that we typically saw much of. Our guide thought they may have been moved on by lions or some other disturbance. It certainly would not have been grazing opportunities as against the floating grass and rushes etc. of the main river.

So Canada and Madagsacar to plan and save up for actually because I think both are big event holidays. I think I have a direct flight for both on Emirates from Dubai so happy days ! I think a bit of driving in Canada and an RV and motels and checked shirts all round ?? Certainly must be some new birds up there - we don't have much from the Americas at all ! Madagascar well there's another book purchase. We have our eye on an eco lodge that has access to Lemur forest but also beach type activities and so on.

Time a swim - thats quite a positive post to push me out into the world with a lot to look forward to. I am happy with those two as choices.

Green Wood-hoopoe - Phoeniculus purpureus
Ruaha National Park, Southern Tanzania
July 2013