Emotional black-and-white-mail

Whenever I return from a long trip on which I've worked hard, I ponder what life would be like if I didn't rove the globe and live out of a suitcase. Today, during a long conversation with Naturetrek, I jokingly announced I would not be going back to Madagascar. No sooner had I hung up the phone than by email I received this photo, which cruelly preys on my weakness for all things sad-eyed and, especially, for the black-and-white ruffed lemur.

I have been outmanoeuvred this time. Nothing for it, I shall have to go back to Madagascar.

Black-and-white ruffed lemur by a dastardly blackmailer

07:37

The many jackdaws get up an hour after me, each dropping his sharp call to earth like a dart. There is frost on my car windscreen and the deeply flooded meadow is a scrum of ducks. Two magpies - for joy - row on round wings across a rain dark sky and, coffee in hand, I sit to my laptop to work: mind backwards to Madagascar, mind forwards to Burma, and an eye, always, to the starling scattered sky above my common.

Hanging around

A few days ago, on this very blog, I gushed over black-and-white ruffed lemurs. As I stood watching the lemurs in Mantadia, extolling their virtues to my group, my charming Naturetrek colleague Kerrie (who, though an old-Madagascar-hand, had never before seen this most glorious of species) fell for their many charms and became a ready convert to Varecia worship. Kerrie took lots of photos of wildlife, landscape and people during our Madagascar's Lemurs tour and these will appear on the Naturetrek website and blog. She has also kindly allowed me to use them here, for the purposes of marshtittery.

Here then, as a taster of the Malagasy delights to come, is a black-and-white ruffed lemur, just hanging around.

Black-and-white ruffed lemur by Kerrie Warburton

Hair

My hairdresser is a lovely young woman with a startling pink streak through her bottle-blonde hair. Emerging scruffily from the forest, I went to see her yesterday.

Hairdresser: Didn't you have all your hair cut off last time you was here?

Marsh tit: Yes, I was travelling again.

Hairdresser: Where was you going?

Marsh tit: I've been in Madagascar for six weeks.

Hairdresser: You're kidding me; I love that film.

This mammal fauna is exceptional for two major reasons. Firstly, every native terrestrial species (a total of approximately 148) is endemic, i.e. they occur naturally nowhere else. No other island or place on Earth boasts such a combination of species richness and endemism. And secondly, these mammals have evolved an extraordinary diversity of both forms and lifestyles often displaying significant convergence with continental forms but also at times evolving utterly unique features […]. The reason for this is simple: Madagascar has been an island for a very long time, which has allowed its mammals to evolve along totally different lines from anywhere else.

Nick Garbutt

Mammals of Madagascar: A Complete Guide

These Austronesians, with their Austronesian language and modified Austronesian culture, were already established on Madagascar by the time it was first visited by Europeans, in 1550. This strikes me as the single most astonishing fact of human geography for the entire world. It’s as if Columbus, on reaching Cuba, had found it occupied by blue-eyed, blond-haired Scandinavians speaking a language close to Swedish, even though the nearby North American continent was inhabited by Native Americans speaking Amerindian languages. How on earth could prehistoric people of Borneo, presumably voyaging in boats without maps or compasses, end up in Madagascar?

Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs and Steel – a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years

Babakoto, Bizet and a brute

Unbeknown to me DTH and Gav have been plotting while I've been in Madagascar. They are my oldest birding friends and theirs is a very benign plot, for they've been planning my path to 1,000 birds before the year is out.

I'd agreed before I left that I'd stay with Gav and his girlfriend Amy in London when I got back, in part just to spend time with them and in part to pick up any good birds which could be seen around town. Gav and Amy are both professional singers so I was asked on arrival whether in the evening I'd like to attend ENO's production of Carmen in which Gav is currently performing. Thus it was that after thirty-six hours without sleep, the last music I'd heard being the rainforest wail of of the indri the day before, and dressed in a new style known as just-out-of-the-jungle, I tipped up at the Coliseum to see the show. I had a splendid time and was very grateful for the privilege.

From opera our exploits turned back to birds and early morning today saw us on the beach at Dungeness looking for the site's regular glaucous gull. This trip was smilingly presented to me as a fait accompli, part of DTH and Gav's master-plan for nudging me past the thousand mark. The gulls at Dungeness were good: among the many great black-backs and herrings was a tidy adult yellow-legged and over the sea were an adult kittiwake and a first winter. I love both yellow-legged gulls and kittiwakes, but I've already seen them this year. I also loved the snazzy adult gannets that were over the moody grey water and the many great crested grebes that were on it, but I've seen tons of those this year too. What I hadn't seen was a glaucous gull.

For some time I continued not to see it, until Gav picked up the handsome, hulking ice-winged brute over the fishing boats. From green jery in the Malagasy forest to glaucous gull on a drizzle-damp beach in wintry Kent in two days. What a world this is.

With the gull on the list we sat in the RSPB hides and watched wigeon, goldeneye and kingfisher until cold, wet and hunger harried us back to London. This afternoon I reached my home in Norfolk where, with DTH and Gav's plot to guide me, I hope to see eight more species of bird before December's done.

New today on a cold, wet beach

	Birds
992	glaucous gull	Larus hyperboreus

2012 Totals

Mammals: 129

Birds: 992

Reptiles: 76

Amphibians: 23

Fish: 12

Sparrows are big

Amy Wood, singer

Fotsy fe

22^nd November

On our last walk in the lovely forest of Analamazaotra my group saw their first eastern avahis. Three adults, in an exposed huddle on a dead tree, stared at us with dopey eyes; they even allowed us to coo over their tiny round-faced infant. Hubbard’s sportive lemur was almost knocked from his popularly-voted position as cutest lemur seen on the tour.

We left the forest without having seen any of the last-minute birds I’d hoped we’d find. I resigned myself to leaving Madagascar on 990 species. A tour leader is always busy so I was late getting back to my room at Vakona Lodge to pack. As I rushed past a flowering Callistemon I heard the seven bright chips of a green jery, which I last heard here more than a year ago. The tiny olive bird was poking his sharp beak into the bristly red flowers above my head. I stopped to watch and had even less time for packing as a result, but I leave Madagascar on 991 birds for the year. Nine more to find in Norfolk before 2012 is out.

Tonight we reached Tana and in the wee small hours of tomorrow we’ll leave Madagascar, courtesy of Air France, bound for Paris and the UK.

New at the eleventh hour today

	Birds
991	green jery	Neomixis viridis

2012 Totals

Mammals: 129

Birds: 991

Reptiles: 76

Amphibians: 23

Fish: 12

Misoatra

21^st November

The clouds were telling the truth: our night-walk was rained off, though not before my group had seen another Crossley’s dwarf lemur and their first short-nosed chameleon. Given that we’ve also seen short-horned and nose-horned chameleons on the tour, it’s no surprise I prefer the scientific names.

Tomorrow morning we visit Analamazaotra for a last walk in the forest; my last walk in a Malagasy forest until who knows when. My last lemurs and my last chameleons. I love them all, when the rain falls and when the sun shines, and it has been a blessing to visit them again.