Ben Locke
Around four years later, I decided to pick up a pencil again. The subject this time was a Common Green Forest Lizard (Calotes calotes), which is found in India and Sri Lanka. I’d taken the reference photograph in the Sinharaja … Read more
No more than four or five drawings later, including this Meadow Pipit, I’d thrown in the towel. I wasn’t happy with what I was capable of, and wasn’t really prepared to invest the time and patience it would take to … Read more
I quite enjoyed art at school. I don’t really remember being taught anything in art lessons, but I do remember mucking about quite a lot and occasionally producing something that slightly surprised me. I was never any better than an … Read more
This website was started 10 years ago, give or take. It started off as a small hard-coded gallery and grew into something more and more unmanageable. Eventually I decided to re-code it, connecting it to a database so that I … Read more
After three nights at Punda Maria it was time to leave. Our destination was Phalaborwa. We first drove back to Shingwedzi which was again a really good place for watching storks and raptors on the river. We also saw a … Read more
I think every day since the day we arrived at Skukuza, we’d seen elephants. It was almost possible to become a bit dismissive about them at times. However, on the drive further north we came across the biggest elephant we’d … Read more
Setting off from Olifants, a very early morning produced little wildlife (a few impala and a couple of zebra) but we did see an Aardvark burrow and nearby diggings. After a bit of birding back at the camp we drove … Read more
After enjoying a brief stop at Satara rest camp (where we would stay the night later in the trip) where we watched the Tree Squirrels, Southern Red-billed Hornbill and the big views over the mostly dry riverbed, we pressed on … Read more
The flight from Heathrow to Johannesburg was 11 hours long. Fortunately we chose an overnight flight so we could sleep through most of it. Unfortunately I didn’t sleep at all. Apart from our neighbouring passenger getting involved in a drunken … Read more
21st-28th August Another family trip but as usual a bit of time spare for birding. This would be my first visit outside of winter, so even if I didn’t see many ‘lifers’ I was always going to add some new … Read more
8th-14th February As per the last German trip, this was primarily about visiting family and friends, punctuated with wildlife whenever time and location allowed. Arriving in Hannover, the Pied Wagtails were still resident in the airport buildings, and Robins confused … Read more