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Scream and scream again, you morning screamers…

14 October 2017 by Simon Barnes 4 Comments

How strange it always is, that first waking in the Luangwa Valley, those few minutes between sleeping and doing as the first grey light hits the sky. I was in bed but the life outside would not wait: and as always it was like being home and not recognising a soul, like being back in your own house and unable to find the bathroom.

I knew that sound, I knew that sound – but I didn’t know what it was, and it was a kind of agony. Was this really the Valley, the place where I left a piece of my heart all but 30 years back? And if so, why couldn’t I put a name to the mad cacklers just outside my hut?

I was due to welcome nine clients to the Valley the following day, co-leading a trip with my old friend Chris Breen, and yet I couldn’t remember the voice of a single bird. You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? Words of James Joyce: you nailed it again, Jim.

And then a wild screaming duet: glorious as the Valley itself. I knew, I knew what that one was, but I still couldn’t put a name to it. It was like trying to adjust to the real world after some traumatic injury: the familiar has become alien and all your certainties have dissolved.

Scream again, you screamers: give me another clue, I beg you. And scream they did but I was no closer. Had I really been here before? Had I merely imagined that last trip, eleven months back, when surely I could recognise the sound of every bird that called?

But that one, that rhythmic repeating bit of song: yes, I knew that and now there was solid ground beneath my feet: Heuglin’s robin, irritatingly and confusingly renamed white-browed robin-chat, but either way an old friend of African mornings. I took confidence: that gabbling, why, I hear that at home in Norfolk: it was Egyptian geese, always garrulous birds.

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Posted in Wildblog

Comments

  1. Peter Annear says

    14 October 2017 at 7:29 pm

    That’s a bit of pertry there, mate…luvverly

    Reply
  2. alisoncornell says

    14 October 2017 at 8:50 pm

    Simon

    I was thinking about you & Chris & your recent group of visitors rising Zambia last month. Maybe your Egyptian geese were saying hello whilst you did a recall from last year – maybe they were saying hello we’re here & look out for what’s ahead like the Hippos! I do hope that your trip found you with masses of sightings trouble free.

    I’d like to let you know that in the spring of this year I was re-homing my fifth hedgehog. Buttons was in a hedgehog house, in an old rabbit run, which worked out well to begin with but on the fourth night I heard a death call at around 1.00 pm when I was asleep, so I opened my bedroom window and discovered a mammal with white stripes, so what next but to shriek at my loudest voice possible.The juvenile badger returned without hesitation looking for a morsel of food. I suddenly donned my dressing gown and was able to save Buttons yet again whilst putting her into the voyager – next morning she was sound asleep, so she had to go back to The Shepreth Hedgehog Hospital to find a new home. At the time my adrenalin was running wild like in the Zambia, almost a year ago!

    I was thankful on both occasions to have survived the experience & it took me a while to work out that wildlife affects us throughout the world.

    Best

    Alison Cornell

    Reply
  3. Di says

    17 October 2017 at 8:30 pm

    Beautifully evocative,many thanks,Simon

    Reply
  4. Michael J Clark says

    20 October 2017 at 9:15 pm

    Loved all the new blogs. Thanks Simon. What has the Boy Wonder been up to?

    Reply

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