Topi can be found across Africa in various local races or subspecies. They also look like Coke’s hartebeest, but are distinguished by their handsome damson coloured thigh patches – very fetching on their chestnut coats. The males are keen on showing themselves off by posing on top of termite mounds – keeping an eye on their females (usually 10-15) and showing would-be rivals that they are on the look-out.
Square Tops #4 Becky has a very special ‘square top’ this morning.
Here we are – a week and a half of home confinement, and I’m thinking Much Wenlock is a pretty nice place to be if one has to live under the lockdown regime. People in the town are trying very hard and with good humour to stick to the strictures of ‘no mingling’, and of course it’s not too hard to do where the population is small and there is plenty of space.
But I can’t help thinking where this will leave us – once the panic abates. Much will have changed; possibly for the foreseeable future. Coming out of isolation may prove a challenge for many. One thing is certain, we must not lose faith in our fellows. We must restore confidence in society in all senses and not keep seeing neighbours and all other humans as vectors of disease, particularly one that has been so badly presented in the often excruciatingly salacious mass media fear-fest.
In the meantime, I am still allowed to walk across the field to my allotment. There are many signs of new growth there despite days of icy winds. The artichoke plants, Swiss chard, over-wintered cauliflower plants, and sprouting broccoli are looking vigorous. There are a few leeks left to eat, assorted salad greens in the polytunnel, and I’ve planted out most of my broad bean seedlings. At home the conservatory is chock-a-block with young pea plants. The spuds are also well chitted and I’m hoping that it will be warm enough in the coming week to get some in the ground.
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And despite the cold, there have also been some amazing-light interludes – ethereal sunshine that opens eyes and mind and spirit in elevating ways. And of course the star of my March snaps has to be the red-legged partridge that arrived so surprisingly on our shed roof the other morning and then launched into full cry for the benefit of any other partridges out there. Coooo-eeeee! For those who missed that post, here’s a reprise along with other views from Wenlock in these stay-at-home days.
It’s back again to the old Africa album for today’s ‘square top’. This photo was taken on our August dry season trip to the Maasai Mara: one of the senior lions of the Marsh Pride (often featured in BBC wildlife films). He is busy calling to his brother, the growl-cum-rumble-cum-roar passing back and forth between them; sounds to make the neck hairs tingle. For their part they turned not a single hair nor gave any sign that they registered our presence as our Land Rover passed close by. Humans, what humans?
P.S. Anyone remember the Top Cat cartoons?
I spotted this little cloud the other day as I was crossing Townsend Meadow on the way to the allotment. And though it has no obvious silver lining, it does seem an optimistic little entity. Very buoyant.
Onwards and upwards, everyone!
Square Tops #2 A big non-mingling hug to Becky for setting us off on this topping mission to keep spirits up every day in April. Follow the link to join in. Square offerings only.
We are told so many things these days. One of them was that the snow on Kilimanjaro would soon be a thing of the past. This photo was taken in Kenya before the prophecy in the late 1990s. We were driving down the old Mombasa highway just south of Kiboko when the mountain put in one of its astonishing appearances, and on a monumental tromp l’oeil scale. It is actually miles away over the Tanzanian border yet it looks as if you could just pop across to it.
Since Al Gore’s 2006 prognostication, travellers have apparently been beating a path to the summit while the snow was still there. Anyway, people will be pleased to know that there have been recent good snowfalls on the mountain. There’s a very nice researchers’ blog Kilimanjaro Climate and Glaciers blog with posts covering the October 2019 (when snowfalls resumed) and February 2020 when there was further snow. The research indicates some shrinkage of the north and south ice fields in their thinnest portions at lower elevations, but a metre of snow was recorded on the summit on 3 February. The satellites are also keeping their eye on things up there. This next image shows the entire caldera covered in snow.
There could be an important lesson here. The absence or presence of snow on Kilimanjaro has long given rise to controversy. In the 1840s when the first missionaries, Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann reported back to Europe of sightings of snow on both Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, they were ridiculed by the experts: how could there possibly be such frigid matter in the equatorial regions. But there was and there is. Which all goes to show. We must choose our ‘experts’ wisely. Only ones with direct evidence and well informed experience of REALITY need apply.
