SKP Guy
Writer, Geographer, Traveller. Human human being
Capturing the Diversity – Where The Atlantic comes ashore
The next stage was to traverses one of these lava flows. I was getting used to crossing these but this one was remarkable. We had to climb a considerable way to get up on top of it – obviou…alanpmills.wordpress.comThe Letterbox on The Letterbox
We were on an almost flat surface, a red billiard table of fine gravel. Stedson pointed out a number of small depressions. These were not some volcanic features from centuries back but in fact th…alanpmills.wordpress.comAirplanes – Leg One
He handed me a small Tupperware box with several Cadbury Eclair sweets inside. I passed them back into the cabin and everyone took one. “Breakfast” said the pilot. He looked around the aircraft o…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comAirplanes – A very important job
I said goodbye to the driver, who had been a good ally over the last few days, and wandered as nonchalantly as I could manage around the nose of the plane. I couldn’t suppress the wide eyed grin c…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – The missed step
After we had studied the spurge, I though walking was relatively easy on this ridge, and I was able to look around me as I stepped. Big mistake. I was looking at Boatswainbird Island as I tucked …alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Stedson’s Spurge
This ridge was proving to be a marker for nesting success. Over the last few years, there seemed to have been a expansion of nesting from the Letterbox area itself up this slope We recorded the d…alanpmills.wordpress.comAirplanes- Weighing up the passengers
The pilot walked immediately off, and everyone took that as their cue to offload the bags and march behind him up to the plane on the hard. The pilot went straight into the business of preparing t…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comAirplanes – Waking up the Airport
We arrived first and when the noise of the engine stopped the deathly quiet was disturbing. Then it was immensely pleasurable as I remembered a sequence of beautiful mornings in Zimbabwe several …alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – two hours in and finally some birds
As we turned the corner I got the first glimpse of Boatswainbird Island. Too many times I have heard people refer to the Ascension Islands, as if this was an archipelago. In actual fact it is rea…alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Starting the longest walk
It was a good job that Ian did not accompany us the next day. I’d signed up for the longest of the bird monitoring walks, to an area called Letterbox. I am not sure it was the worst; appare…alanpmills.wordpress.comAirplanes – Change of plan
Unfortunately there was one part of the equation that had been omitted; the efficiency of Air Tanzania. I was disturbed to find out when I reached Bujumbura in Burundi that my Air Tanzania flight …alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comAirplanes – Early Morning Call
“Knock Knock”. I was already up but Leonard wanted another tip. I struggled to put some trousers on and went to the door. My half naked self met Leonard’s half naked self. “Yes” “your early mo…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Time for a fag
We continued our walk and covered maybe a hundred individual nests and counted the colonies on at least seven stacks. We were so busy in amongst the cliffs and the lava field that I barely looked …alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – How to monitor the bird nests
It took quite a while before we reached the first birds and they were situated on the first of a series of small stacks along the coast. Again it was impossible to count every egg and chick, but t…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Won’t do this again
If you want to read the first post in Sand in the Sandwiches, click here After Mauritania, I did one more trip for NRI as an employee, and two further trips as a consultant for them. Then I moved …alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Soaking up others’ relaxation
We walked along the strand for a good half mile, joining many families from the city out doing the same. It was the first time in Africa I had really seen people out daytripping. In most places I …alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Starting round the cliff tops
The other bird monitoring walks were nowhere near as easy as that one with the Cripps. On my first trip, after Edsel had already left with his frozen fish for Nashville, and I was waiting for the …alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Dampier’s Drip
Before desalination, this must have been the supply for all the barracks and residences, stores and everything. Rain did happen on Ascension, but apart from on Green Mountain it was very rare. We…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Trip to the Port Au Peche
We had little time to explore the country outside of work. With just two short weeks we had to hit the ground running. Additionally we got our weekends confused. Mauritania, being Muslim, had Fr…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Email and Computers
Ghana was the first place I sent emails for work, from Nina Chachu’s British Council office. It was a couple of years later before I sent personal messages out. But here in Mauritania, underneat…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – 2/3 the power of the island
As we walked back, I was staring right into the eastern array of the World Service transmitters. Five huge Faraday cages supported a network of wires from which the BBC World Service pumped out it…alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – a surprise in the water
I was OK. I used the time to work with conservation. I say work, for much of the time, I just joined in with their activities like the cat scat monitoring and the bird monitoring. Graham and Mar…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Changes in Communication
Mauritania was one of the last trips I did with NRI, and I found it incredible how my work had changed since that first trip to Harare in 1993. In those days a new technology was just becoming ava…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Vignettes and Logjams
All the buildings had little to merit them architecturally, they were simple square concrete flat roofed blocks. Some were three storeys, most were one. Apart from the Europcar rental place oppos…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Counting Birds -while waiting for a plane
Over the years, I went on several of the bird monitoring walks that the conservation group had to do. The RSPB programme was intense; because apart from the wideawakes,the number of birds was so l…alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Fairy Terns and recolonising the island
Here round the eastern flanks of Green Mountain is one of my most favourite parts of the island, and that is saying a lot for an island which I love intensely. The terrain is a little softer than …alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – the Mosque and the Apartment
The most beautiful building in Nouakchott was outside my bedroom window. The Central Mosque, one of two major mosques in the city, was not made out of the nearly ubiquitous concrete, but a warm r…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Living in the City
The best place to see it was the Locust compound itself. It was situated on the far side of town, beyond one of these sprawling squatter settlements. Although nicely shaded by acacia trees, on t…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – exploring the Green Mountain trails
In between the monitoring it was another great way to explore the island and get some exercise in. Most of the paths on Green Mountain were set up over 100 years ago by those who were experimentin…alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – The Rat Pack
With the cats gone, the worst of the introduced mammals were the rats. A programme of rat eradication was impossible on an island the size of Ascension, there are simply too many hidey holes and t…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – the Milton Keynes of the Desert
Nouakchott was a kind of Milton Keynes in the desert. This was partly due to the nature of colonial rule in the former French colony. The old city of St Louis on what is now the border between Se…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Ba, Bob and Rose
So Mauritania was the first time I really saw a working locust centre. Ould Babah commanded an impressive set up, with field stations out in the desert hundreds of miles from Nouakchott. Ba, the…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Cat, Scat and a Pat on the back
I joined Ray, Damian and Greggy one time on one of their walks to check and maintain these stations. The route took us between One Boat and Traveller’s Hill, passing nearby the refuse dump. …alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity -Capturing the cats
Much more problematic for the sooty terns were the predation by the introduced mammals. One of the key drivers for the bird conservation programme on Ascension had been the massive increase in fer…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches -The little cog at the end
I skirted the edge of this work, as NRI had no major involvement in campaigns and research when I first arrived, but instead were given to advising on biogeographical matters. But the work starte…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Digging into the archives
In the massive ranks of plan presses next to the record archive were thousands of survey maps; one a month, overlaid with strong tracing paper, the intersections of a few latitudes and longitudes …alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity -The struggle to survive
As well as heading to Wideawake Fair with Anselmo, Edsel and I also went on a tour with some tourists led by Ray and Stedson one time and visited the Mars Bay tern colony. The lava fields beyond t…alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Wideawakes
Stedson had a right to grumble about the plants playing second fiddle to other efforts, especially on my earlier visits. Much of the conservation effort on Ascension Island had been focused on the…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Science against the locust
In terms of intervention in locust plagues, there were many aspects of research and activity. Some focused on lab work in locust biology; seeing how long they could fly without food, how they cou…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Learning about the locusts
Locusts, like a whole bunch of insects, have two distinct phases which are crucial for determining how much damage has been done. In their solitary phase, they hang around in small groups, spaced…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – say hello to the little plants
Accompanying us that day was an expert from Oxford University and his colleague in Bryophytes. These are those lower order plants like mosses, liverworts and algae. Much ignored in conservation e…alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Mapping the Vegetation
Kew had their own GIS section (whose members were also keen to travel to these amazing islands) so I never got a huge amount of work from these visits, but given I had helped Stedson over the years…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Getting used to the customs and the Great Locust Archive
Mauritania blew away so many of my preconceptions. Before my arrival, I had always had some concerns about visiting a devoutly Muslim country. Although I know how to check myself, I am prone to …alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches -how to forget a bad journey
All the time, Ould Babah sat amongst the group absorbing the effect of his own benevolence. The talk switched from locusts to Mauritania to our own efforts at getting to Nouakchott. I had been s…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing Diversity – The Kew Connection
Stedson always grumbled that the other conservation programmes on the island got a lot more attention and resources – whether it be counting turtles or monitoring the birds. But I did see ov…alanpmills.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – to the top of the Island
Edsel and I walked up beyond this planting site on our first trip, taking along Greggy from the Environmental Health Department. One path, called the Dew Pond, reached the very summit of Green Mou…alanpmills.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Savouring the dinner
From one corner of the rooftop, bright lights emanated from a corridor no doubt leading to the kitchen. A whole host of people kept emerging from this hole with all manner of plates and bowls. F…alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comSand in the Sandwiches – Tea and an invitation to dine on a roof
It does not matter how exotic the location, within a couple of days everything becomes familiar and routine rules the whole day. I was not the only one. While working away at the locust centre, …alanpmillsuk.wordpress.comCapturing the Diversity – Stedson’s Kingdom
Debate rages amongst conservationists about how much you should do to rebalance the amount of native species with those which have been introduced. I don’t think anyone would like Green Moun…alanpmills.wordpress.com
