A collection of curious glimpses of the wild that I come across, showcased here in video form. Little pieces of wonder that never cease to amaze me.
FARMLAND BIRDS
Feeding declining populations of farmland birds through the hungry gap between mid-winter and spring.
ASSASSIN BUG
Assassin bugs cover themselves with caracases of the ants they’ve eaten in order to ambush more. This one was on the wall of my house.
EMPEROR SCORPION
Emperor scorpions are one of the largest scorpions in the world and live in the savannahs and rainforests of West Africa. Like all other scorpions they glow under ultraviolet light and navigate by starlight. I saw this one in the Atewa Forest in Ghana.
PANGOLIN
This is the magical few seconds of footage showing the pangolin that I helped to rescue and release uncurling, revealing its beady eye. A few minutes later it walked off and up a tree, free once more in the forest where it belongs.
MANGROVE FOREST
A local fishermen took me in his canoe down the Ankobra river in the western region of Ghana to look for crocodiles. We did not see any crocs but the mangroves swallowed us up into a different world of dancing shadows and echoing sounds.
HATCHLING AGAMA
This is a hatchling agama lizard, named after the Latin for ‘unmarried’ because the males choose half a dozen females to spend their lives with. If this hatchling is a female, her markings will turn into olive and browns. If it is a male, his head will turn orange and his body a purplish grey. These lizards spend a lot of their time sunning themselves on the thorny buttresses of kapok trees.