The drives were often gruelling. 6 hours in the car and the tracks were so rough, brings a whole new meaning to the expression ‘off reading’ but to me they were like gold. Elisse, my guide would often stop unannounced and look this way and that and of course I did too, following his every movement. We must have looked like Mere Cats, craning the necks and twitching head directions in unison like a programmed orchestra. It took me a while before I realised his live for the birds…feathered of course. He is such a tall strong Tanzanian man that it is kind of cute that he sees the feathered variety as fascinating. And boy could he see!!! To me in the distance they looked brown or grey but then he would make me use my binoculars and they would be the most vivid things…like the lilac throated roller, or Fischer Love Birds.. he saw the smallest to the enormous. Great big Secretary birds, lifting long legs delicately and pushing their flat crested heads forwards and backwards like the huge Ostriches. I hadn’t realised that the black shiny feathered ones were the boys and the shaggy brown ones were the girls. They lay eggs together and a clutch can have any dozens from different females. Not bad hey…a sort of communal egg farm. I was lucky to see loads of Kori bustards, big things again, but when mating the male puffs up his chest whilst the female sits completely bored looking some meters away. Maybe that s the secret. ? The water birds flourished, hundreds of pelicans and different storks but nothing beats an eagle perched regally on the top of a fig tree as it takes flight like a giant menacing plane… or the eagle owl whose large head and eyes would swivel like something out of a movie. Irridescent blue starlings captured me so now I have respect for the birds. ?