Early Portuguese and Spanish explorers who visited the island of New Guinea in the 16th century were astounded by magnificent, brilliantly colored birds, whose plumage was used by the locals to adorn their headgear and bodies. European naturalists who examined skins of these birds brought back from New Guinea noticed that all specimens lacked legs,…
Category: Gorongosa
Mozambique Diary: A reversal of fortune
Gorongosa National Park is heaven for praying mantids – nowhere else in the world have I seen so many different species or similarly high abundance of these insects. This appears to be a good indicator of the overall condition of this ecosystem, with almost unlimited availability of prey. Usually this means grasshoppers and other insects,…
Mozambique Diary: The Marbled half-piglet
Walking around the Chitengo Camp in Gorongosa, especially after the rain when the earth is soft, I often run into two types of cute, pig-like creatures. Warthogs are the more noticeable ones, digging around for roots and grubs, completely unafraid of the busy activity of the preparations for the opening of the tourist season. But…
Mozambique Diary: The stuff of dreams
Isn’t it fascinating that the same thing can be the subject of one person’s worst nightmares, and another person’s wildest dreams and desires? Nothing illustrates this point better than the Golden orb spiders (Nephila), which my wife doesn’t even call spiders – they are simply her Nemesis, clearly intent on luring her into their enormous…
Mozambique Diary: It is loud out here
I am back from the first reconnaissance trip to the Cheringoma Plateau in the eastern part of Gorongosa. It was slow going and in nearly all places we were forced to do a lot of road clearing, removing or finding a way around fallen trees, but the rewards were great. The eastern part of the…
African Tuesday: Being bark
When I first read “Out of Africa”, which to this day remains one of my favorite books, the one thing that left me oddly dissatisfied was the lack of attention to trees of the savanna – their smell and colors, the texture of their bark and, most importantly, all the wonderful creatures that the author must…
The Smaller Majority 