On our second-to-last night in Oxford, I was on the 35A bus home when I got a call  from my big sister, Sian, who’s in Argentina doing some research. I almost never get calls on my mobile, so am a bit of a spaz when I have to answer it. I’m also deeply self-conscious about having loud conversations in public. Anyway I managed to get it to work properly, and had an awesome chat with my boy-wonder nephew, Zach, who has a remarkable memory for a toddler. He quizzed me about which animals Lu and I would see in Africa, carefully repeating each one as I said them, probably committing them to memory, and inquiring about the rest. We chatted like this for a good ten minutes, and doing so I realised that this could really be an amazing trip for wildlife, and although I’m pretty crap at taking pictures of animals—it requires a level of patience considerably beyond my meagre resources—it would be a waste not to make an effort. And it would be great to be able to show Zach pictures of all the birds and beasts we talked about on the bus. So I’ll keep this page updated with all the new animal pictures, from wee-headed egrets to Barbary macaques, and who knows what else further south. We sacrificed our bird book to the Ryanair gods, unable to squeeze it into the 15kg limit, so we’ll have to make up names for the birds we don’t know. Usually I end up calling them siskins, or I’m convinced they’re shrikes.

Thus far (I’m writing in Rabat, Morocco), it’s been all about donkeys and storks, and the aforementioned wee-heads (it’s their plumage for mating season). It being spring, the storks are also a little amorous, which for them means clacking their great bills together, making a noise like one of those old fashioned rattles people used to take to football games (did they really? or is it something I’ve only seen in Harry Enfield sketches…). We were particularly pleased to see barbary macaques at the Cascades d’Ouzoud; they’re squat, muscular monkeys, with long fur and, on this occasion at least, a refreshingly disinterested disposition. A stark contrast with the scrawny comb-over mendicants you get roaming around Indian archaeological sites.