Following a recommendation, I ordered a copy of The Lighthouse Notebook by Norman McCanch. It arrived from an American bookseller this morning and when I opened the package and started flicking through the pages, I came across a number of pressed leaves – all American by the look of them. A lovely little bonus!

A 4am wake up, an orange setting moon, an early peregrine protection shift and a great sunrise – this is why I volunteer! #dawnchorusday

…just keeps on giving; today there were bluebells, wild garlic and willow warblers.

I did the second of four breeding bird surveys at Cheshire Wildlife Trust’s Bagmere reserve this morning.  It was a chilly and slightly damp start but the weather wasn’t sufficiently poor to postpone the visit.

I’ve not been out in the Cheshire countryside much over the last two weeks and it has changed quite a lot with the plants starting to show their spring growth.

Our summer visitors are starting to arrive in good numbers and I recorded grasshopper warbler, willow warbler and swallow for the first time this year but there are still more to come.

Yet again, I didn’t record willow tit, which is disappointing but there are two more visits this spring to find them.

…coming in to land at Johannesburg.

I’m just sat in Heathrow Terminal 5 waiting for a flight to Johannesburg and trying not to get too excited too early – it’s an eleven hour flight after all and then I’m not stopping there! Tomorrow lunchtime I’m catching a shorter flight to Maun in Botswana – the gateway to the Okavango Delta.  

After seeing the wildlife of Africa so often on TV I thought it was about time I saw it for real and the Okavango seems like a good place to start.  The trip is a bird-focussed holiday organised by Naturetrek but I’m hoping for plenty of mammals too – I’d be a very happy boy if I saw African hunting dogs!

I realised a while back that I’d missed Africa and its wildlife off my bucket list, so I’m making amends with this being my second long distance trip outside of Europe (the first being the Falklands and hopefully more to come).

For the first time in a while, I’m travelling laptopless, so there won’t be any updates while I’m out there. However, hopefully there’ll be plenty to blog about on my return!

After working from home today I took the opportunity on a bright (but slightly breezy) spring day to go for an early evening cycle. With the wind coming from the east, I went out in a less frequently headed direction and up into the small hills across the Staffordshire border. The area isn’t far from home but I’ve not really explored it much before and when I came to a junction I decided to make a new turn and go down a road I’ve not passed along before…it led me to a stunning little valley.

With the sun out and the grass turning a spring rich green, all under a bright blue sky, the valley seemed to be approaching its prime. All it needed was for the trees to be bursting into leaf. As I came to the end of the valley bottom road, I stumbled across a little piece of woodland with a rich carpet of wood anemones forming a green, white and yellow carpet beneath – lovely.