Statuesque cattle

There is more to Baboonland than baboons only. These days, I'm loving cattle. They cross my property, graze and provide me with manure. And they are beautiful.

This is what I see from the large windows and porch south of my house. It feels so right to live there. I can't wait to move permanently!

Long time, no post!

I can't believe it's been almost two years since I last posted! Lots of things happened, as usual. I don't have so much time to sit down and blog, and there are so many things I'm (more) interested in that blogging had to take a back burner position.

A short update: I bought a small piece of land in the bush, close to Shai Hills Resource Reserve. Because of the numerous baboons one can see on the road, I dubbed it "Baboonland". I'll start building a little retreat this year and hope it will be completed by mid-September. I'll welcome the change of scenery, the isolation, the newness of it all. Actually, I can't wait to be there! More space for the (now 3) dogs, the opportunity to have an orchard (mango trees abound in the area, but I also plan on having lime and orange trees, avocado pear trees, guava trees, pawpaw of course... and probably many more!), a kitchen garden (I even found online a nice trick for my lazy back AND to protect my herbs from 3 male dogs marking, see here!).

Back to the dogs... It has been a long time since I last wrote or published pictures of my dogs or of any indigenous dogs. I was asked last month to write a piece for a U.S. dog paper and online magazine. I was happy to be contacted, and wary too, for the same reasons that led me to stop "advertising" the indigenous dogs. I decided to write the article anyway, complete with an explanation of my reluctance. I will see whether it is published and if so, how much it will be edited. Another aboriginal dog fancier, of the less normative type, also asked me to send an article for the Primitive and Aboriginal Dog Society's journal, whose interests are closer to mine. I intend to gather more information, especially about hunting with dogs, before I finalise my contribution.

Again, a lot of very different things to do, a lot of interests to weave into my already quite full life... But I've never been comfortable with idleness, so I won't complain!

To be continued!

Good news out of small and major disasters

My computers have been giving me a lot of headaches over the last few weeks but while scanning my various backups I discovered a gem I didn't know I still had: all the pictures I used for a website on Ghanaian aboriginal dogs (subscription lapsed years ago). What a treat!

They are all here: http://tinyurl.com/Avuvis.

Some of the dogs are mine (the two red ones in a European setting, from the 2-year stint I did in France 6-8 years ago), most are encounters I made in 2004 around Batsonaa, a suburb of Accra, Ghana.

A friend in South Africa told me about an interesting initiative. Read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/Funda-Nenja.

Teaching less fortunate kids to handle their dogs as a way of introducing them to the human and social values of compassion, gentleness and care is a brilliant idea, one that should be replicated elsewhere, to help make our world better.

To those who would find this endeavour shallow or useless, or that one should concentrate on human beings rather than dogs, I'll say: Kakrabia nsua. Every little helps. Our world does need compassion, gentleness and care. A lot.

Oyez! Here comes the younger generation

Nature never ceases to fill me with wonder. 5.30pm is when my patio is at its noisiest: you can hear birds chirping and wings fluttering frenetically for about five minutes. If you are lucky (or on the lookout), this is what you can get a glimpse of:


You may not remember them, but they are featured on this blog (or their parents) already. Click here to be introduced to the older generation.



Please remember to visit this blog again in the next few days; I intend to publish pictures of these youngsters outside their nest. Better still, click on "follow this blog" in the upper left section of this page and be informed each time it is updated.

Nature defies imagination

The more I looked at the dozens of pictures I took of this bat colony, the more they seemed to blur into abstract works with a distinct kind of Japanese art quality. Bare branches twisted so much as to appear the work of an imaginative painter rather than true to nature...


... tightly knotted parcels hanging under the branches, like as many clever origamis...


... and throughout, a study in delicate shades of black (bat)-brown, bark-brown, and yellowish brown from the bats' bellies.

Nature is so amazing. Man never invented anything more sophisticated, not even the most brilliant painters.

Bat colony

Yesterday I took advantage of the quiet after the New Year's celebrations (and hence the exceptional absence of traffic jams) to go and take dozens of pictures of what is the biggest bat colony I've ever seen.


It is truly amazing to see these dense clusters of sleepy or sleeping bats hanging head down from virtually every branch or twig of a long avenue of mainly huge old neem trees.


Sometimes it's a bit difficult to ascertain which tree they dwell in, considering that some seem to have given up growing leaves, the bat population apparently taking all the place... and then some.


They even hang on to bigger branches and trunks.


Some clusters are so dense one wonders how they can sleep at all (and what exactly they are hanging on to: invisible twigs? fellow bats?).


I find it so fascinating that they would live in colonies of thousands, probably tens of thousands. The mind boggles and I just couldn't begin to imagine a way of assessing a range. A lot!


Googling as usual, I discovered that there is a huge colony of bats in Kumasi, supposedly about 400,000 of them. They are called straw-coloured flying foxes and their description make it likely that those in front of 37 Military Hospital are cousins of the Kumasi ones. Below are a few excerpts of the article you can read in full by clicking here:

Flying foxes (a type of fruit bats) are key pollinators and seed dispersers. The fruit of the Iroko tree makes up 88.9 percent of the diet of the straw-colored flying fox during its annual migrations. Aware that Iroko ranks as one of Africa’s most valuable and threatened hardwood trees, I realized that seed dispersal of such an important tree would provide strong economic incentives for the conservation of Ghana’s traditionally persecuted straw-colored flying foxes.

Happy reading! I hope you'll enjoy discovering the fascinating world of bats as much as I did.

A very happy New Year 2009 to all of you!

Out with 2008, it's folded and packed away for good now...



This morning I went to the Military Hospital to take pictures of a huge bat colony. I cannot begin to imagine how many they are, but I would say several thousands. Tens of thousands maybe. Very, very impressive. I took a lot of pictures, about 50, but finally decided to post only one, as a symbol of the end of last year. Folded, closed, over and done with.

Here comes 2009, full of hopes and new beginnings!


Back home, I discovered that in the one tree growing in my diminutive patio, there was one very visible nest (I am aware of several, but only this one is easy to see). I took a picture and when I zoomed on it on my computer, I was surprised to realise there was at least a bird in it. (yes, bottom left, can you see its head?) Here I had my Happy New Year metaphor all written graphically for me by nature: old things folded, new things emerging.

Happy New Year to you all! I'm delighted with nature and its surprises and it seems very much that I'll keep deriving a lot of happiness from these chance encounters with the many exemples of perfection, quirks and mysterious occurrences it offers daily to anybody paying a little attention.