I hate early starts to the day but Monday 15th April saw me arrive at Norwich Airport at 04:00am for the connecting KLM flight to Amsterdam and then to Killimanjaro to begin a 14 day photo trip around Tanzania arranged by Wild Images. Just managed to arrive for dinner that evening, a good sleep and the next day to relax ready for the trip to formally commence with dinner on Tuesday evening to meet the Trip Leader, Oliver Kreuger and the three other participants from USA. The trip proper to commence on Wednesday morning - early again!!!

The hotel for the first two nights was at the Arusha Serena Hotel - really good with nice rooms and very attractive gardens. Looking out from my room after breakfast, there was a small bush with, would you believe it, birds. Out came the camera.

First species was Common Bulbul

and then several Speckled Mousebirds

There was one species that I could not identify until a friend made me aware of  Merlin Bird ID, a bird identification website. By uploading a photo, it will identify the bird. So I uploaded one photo that it immediately identified as a Golden-backed Weaver.

Being naturally very wary of such things, I investigated further and all seemed to add up.

So that was the first day, before the start of the trip. An encouraging start in my book.

Over the course of the trip, I took many thousands of photos so sorting those out will take a time.

In the meantime, I will still be chasing birds around East Anglia.