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The Link Bus from Kampala to Kasese and Other Stories

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For the past three years, my partner, Leela, has been regularly travelling to a peninsula in the far West of Uganda to carry out her PhD research. I had been hearing about the place, the people, and its wildlife for so long that I was beginning to fear that my perception of the place was doomed to remain the one I had formed in my own head, but a couple of months ago I was finally able to visit for a couple of weeks, and experience the Mweya Peninsula for myself. In total I saw 181 species over the 18 days, with 150-ish of those being lifers. But I didn’t want to do a full trip blog for this, I started to write it a couple of times, and it always came out sounding quite “and then we went there, and then we went there”. So, I have decided to frame my trip in 7 short excerpts, as well as one longer story; one which took well over 7 hours and ended any hope of my back remaining functional past 50. That story is a coach journey, and it was just a small part of an incredible trip. I want ...
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Trip to East Norfolk and Suffolk with Joe

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Intro Something I didn’t mention in my last blog entry is that during my time in the Pyrenees, I discovered that my friends back home in England were on a birding trip to Norfolk. Now this wouldn’t usually have bothered me, but I discovered this at almost the exact second I realised I wasn’t going to see a Black Woodpecker, despite climbing a mountain to do so (see the previous post for more on this). But that’s not the only reason I felt a little sad about their being in Norfolk. My paternal grandparents have had a house in West Norfolk since I was very young, and birding excursions while visiting them on family holidays are without a doubt what nurtured an early love for all things feathered. And as an adult, having a place to stay in Norfolk has been a blessing for developing my birding skills. I have taken to staying with my grandparents for birding trips fairly regularly, going up there for New Year’s Day 2025, and briefly before last year’s MigFest as well, usually with my frie...
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New Year Trip to the foothills of the Pyrenees and the Gard

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Why Blog? Before I detail my observations from this trip, I think it would be best to elaborate on why I wanted to start this blog. I have several reasons, which I will list shortly, but thought that I should shout out Thomas Miller’s post about winter geese on his Birding Blog - posted in late December – which kick-started this endeavour. I was always under the impression that blog-writing (or, alternatively vlogging) was something of an egotistical pursuit, and the resulting blogs were frequently dry, but in reading Thomas’s last entry, such fears were dispelled. Thomas’s recent blog post: https://tmbirding.blogspot.com/2025/12/patch-geese.html My own reasons for beginning this blog are also assumptions about what the process of writing this often will do for me. Firstly, I’m hoping that this blog may help improve my quality of writing. This year I have been writing a lot of job applications, and I have often found myself struggling to find the correct word to use or writing i...
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