Birds, bats and the beauty of nature

I WAS told there were crocs, but only after I’d been swimming.

“Over there, though, not here...” my informant added reassuringly, pointing to a spot a hundred yards away.

I saw no hippos as I was paddled up a broad creek of the Gambia river by my Senegalese boatman, Mamoud. Hippos annually account for the untimely demise of more Africans than any other creature except, of course, fellow Africans. However, The Gambia is a peaceful place and I need not have worried; hippos do not frequent the waters west of McCarthy Island, these being saline.