Mousebirds

This is the blue-naped mousebird, an inhabitant of the drier parts of East Africa. A typical adult is about 30cm long and they're called mousebirds because, rather like dunnocks in this country, they have a habit of scurrying around on the ground in their search for food.

While the species has suffered a decline in recent years it was a common visitor to our gardens when I was a boy in East Africa. For reasons I don't remember or, perhaps, for no good reason at all, mousebirds were fair game to hunt, which we did with catapults made by our garden 'boy', Mlalo, out of a forked stick, bicycle tyre rubber, and a rounded piece of leather to hold the missile.

I attempted to murder a number of mousebirds but I only recall one occasion when I felt I might have hit one. I made no attempt to search the place where it disappeared not because I didn't want to see the result of my attack but because, moments after I shot at it, one of the small boys with me spotted a snake - and I wasn't keen to explore the thicket into which both snake and bird had disappeared.

The photo was taken in Tanzania, at Saadani, in 2012. The bird was very close, had seen me, and was unafraid. It wasn't until that moment that I realised how beautiful mousebirds are.