Not with an animal this time, but an atmospheric phenomenon. My first attempt at seeing the aurora was in Iceland, in 2004. Nothing, despite a clear sky. My second attempt was in Norway, in 2005, and I did catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. They appeared as just a couple of muted green streaks in the sky, which maybe lasted for fifteen minutes before they faded away. Nothing daunted (it did, after all take me more than twenty years to finally see a leopard in the wild) I tried Finland, Greenland and Svalbard. I did get to see polar bears in Svalbard, which are probably even more difficult to see than the the aurora, so I was lucky. But the spectacle in the sky still eluded me.
Recently we've taken to revisiting places when, for one reason or another, there was something we didn't see the first time round. My last post, in the Gambia, was one of those. We also revisited Madagascar in 2023, hoping to see the fossa and the aye-aye, the trip which salmonella had blighted for almost the whole party on the first occasion in 2011 – and succeeded. So it seemed quite reasonable to give Norway a second go as well. We just booked a short trip, staying in Tromso as before, with a couple of Northern Lights expeditions. Once we got settled in the hotel, we decided to go prospecting for restaurants at which to have dinner. Our hotel was right on the quay, and as soon as we emerged we realised there were lots of people just standing around, looking across the water. It didn't occur to me to wonder why until I looked up, and there they were. Green and yellow and purple. We stayed out there watching for half an hour, and they didn't disappoint. The following night we did do a long drive, almost to the Finnish border, in the hopes of seeing them again, but it was a somewhat underwhelming experience compared to the evening before – although they did make an appearance.
Shortly after we got back from Madagascar, we saw a tv programme about the fossa. It's the apex predator, proabably tracing its ancestry back to mongooses, although it's much bigger, and it feeds principally on lemurs. It fills the niche never occupied by leopards, as Madagascar broke away from mainland Africa 60,000 years ago, and evolved some weirdnesses all its own. The programme spent many days trying to find one, and when they did it was collared, which I regard as cheating! We were staying at a lodge in the Kirindi Forest, and I went out birdwatching one morning, only to see a long tail disappearing behind the kitchen. There was only one thing it could be, at which point my camera battery ran out. It was definitely a fossa, so I called my husband and asked him to keep an eye on the beast until I returned. It wasn't in the least bit frightened of him, and actually approached rather too close for comfort. Note the teeth in my photo!
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| The aye-aye |
The elephant bird, now extinct, was enormous, and the giant lemur is now also extinct. But the strangest lemur of all, the aye-aye, is still around, and I got to see it on an organised trip to an island. I also got to see the Amber Mountain Rock thrush, which is rare. It was just sitting in a bush next to the road. The aye-aye is the world's largest nocturnal primate, with long fingers, one of which is elongated so that it can search for grubs beneath the bark of trees. It taps on the branch until it can hear movement, then it gnaws a hole and uses the finger to extract the grub. It has such a devilish aspect, that in the past it was regarded with deep suspicion.
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| Amber Mountain Rock thrush |
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| Lemurs are always on the lookout for bananas... |
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