The termite mound had been breached by an African honey badger. The excavation bore the characteristic signature of its typically furious, single-minded digging, a cone of loose red soil fanned out across the surrounding ground. The mound itself, a two-metre column of compacted earth on the edge of a drainage line in the Sabi Sand, had a jagged opening at its base roughly the size of a football.

I have spent much of my birding journey fortunate enough to listen for birds before I see them. Long before a Narina Trogon reveals its almost incomprehensible palette of colours, its harsh, frog-like call often gives it away. Long before you begin to realise that summer has arrived, the duet of a Woodland Kingfisher pair echoes through the woodland. Their arrival marking the true onset of summer. For anyone who has spent time birding, sound is not a supplement to birding. Rather, it is often the first, only, and most reliable clue that nature presents you with.

In 2021, a three-year-old female African wild dog spent a year travelling more than 2,300 kilometres across southern Africa. She climbed in and out of the Rift Valley in Zambia, swimming rivers, crossing major highways, and slipping past towns before crossing the Zambian border into Mozambique, then on to the border of Zimbabwe. It was one of the longest journeys recorded for the species.

BirdLife South Africa’s Vulture Project