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.