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Friday 6 January 2012

Thunderstorms in Africa.

It is so beautiful, I just have to share it with you.

(The lost trails of the Transvaal - TV Bulpin) In summer, if the rains were good, it was green and beautiful in its very spaciousness. The air was brisk, the horizon clear and clean from one curve of the earth to the other; while overhead the sky was as blue as a magic ocean, with giant cloud ships manoeuvring around, finding positions, and then opening fire each afternoon with their big guns, hammering away with flashes and crashes, until one sprung a leak and showered the earth with the rain or the hail of a thunderstorm.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

The sounds of summer in Southern Africa


On a hot summer's day
on the beautiful african bushveld
the cicada's background noise
make it feel hotter than it really is
and a grey-headed bush shrike plays 
hide and seek with you

A red chested cuckoo and the burchell coucal
sing of the rain to come
whilst in the rainstorm the frogs bursts out 
in their joyous grateful song
with the rumbling thunder as their beat

just as you light the braaifire
you catch a glimpse of an orange tail
as a paradise flycatcher flies past to his cupful of nest

Somewhere in the not too far away
in their gorgeous turquoise attire
a woodland kingfisher and his friend
is practicing for the Christmas Choir