The 2022 Africa Journals, Chapter 16: Story Telling: Finch Hatton

 Chapter 16:   

Story Telling: Finch Hatton 

Finch Hatton gave up hunting and began to espouse … creating reserves, such as the Serengeti, and helping to form a new school of hunters and big game safari guides to help protect protected species and combat poaching.-Freddie del Curatolo

 

 

 

Finch Hatton.   Finch Hatton.   Finch Hatton.

 

How do you know that name?

 

Hints:  Denys Finch Hatton, Isak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen, Beryl Markham.   Got it yet?

 

Okay, how about Robert Redford and Meryl Streep?    And “Out of Africa”?

 

Finch Hatton was a British aristocrat, soldier, and "dandy"  posted to East Africa when he met author Karen Blixen and famed Kenyan aviatrix Markham, and had affairs with both.   He died when his Gipsy Moth crashed shortly after takeoff from an airstrip in Africa.

 

In the meantime, he made an immense impression on many and his name lives on in numerous ways.   For instance, I stayed in the Finch Hatton suite at Giraffe Manor some years ago.   

Now you have enough info to do some Googling on your own.   I suggest starting here.

 

https://www.malindikenya.net/en/articles/words/stories/90-years-of-a-kenyan-myth--denys-finch-hatton.html.  

I found the drawing below of the Finch Hattons lodged on their website.  Start at the reception area, which is also the dining room, etc., and go right.   Follow the trail across the water and our tent was the first one in that line of three tented suites.  

This lodge operates their safaris differently than most.   After a couple days experiencing and observing, I reached the conclusion that rather than a true game safari lodge, its identity is as a place that offers luxury, world class dining, a place to sit back and relax and sight-seeing drives to view birds and animals.

Our game drives started at 6 A.M., but we returned to the lodge for a sit down breakfast. around 9.   Their famous (self-declared) waffles were outstanding and we all enjoyed at least a quarter of one before ordering eggs and what have you.

The dining room.    Here is where our primary focus as photographers revealed itself.  

See the small dark green bush in the left center, beyond the tray table with the red objects on it?  T

that's where we interrupted almost every breakfast and lunch and ran to photograph the sunbirds.

The photo below comes from the Finch Hattons lodge website.   On our last night here, we were treated to dinner under a full moon.   We were entertained by a busy baby running around on the perimeter roofs, and serenaded by a nightjar.

Red-Headed agama.

Every day I would see black crakes walking across the old bridge.

Curious vervet baby stares at us as we sit on the lodge steps and photograph it.

The old bridge.

Eland

Squacco heron

African jacana walking on lily pads.

Baby ostrich

Mum, Dad, and some of their babies.

The same baby vervet as above.

Finch Hattons generates its own electricity.   On the bedside table is the on/off schedule for the generator:

So, we're on a game drive from 6 to roughly 9 A.M. and the power goes off until 12:30, just before lunch.   This is the time we would download the morning photos.

The power stayed on until 3, when it shut down again.   We rushed through lunch and photographing the sunbirds and hurried back to our tents to edit photos.   Or, most stayed around the water and photographed the bird life.   I sat on my deck and did that with my long lens.

At 4 P.M, we were off on a game drive until about 6:30.   We had time before dinner to start downloading, and time after dinner to download and edit.   

Now, one of our group used a CPAP machine in order to breathe while sleeping and the lodge kindly left the generator on all night.   The staff here was exceptionally kind and went out of their way to accommodate us, including not clearing away our half-eaten meals when we dashed off the photograph tiny birds.

This impala is showing the effects of lack of feed and of raising a young calf.

Pied kingfisher watching the water below from the rail of the new bridge.

These Cape buffalo are resting near where two of their herd were killed by lions recently.   It is cleared because it is an unused section of road.

The cute rock hyrax.   They are called daisies in South Africa.

White-crowned bushshrike.

A martial eagle with a full crop.   The martial is the largest of African eagles with a weight of 14 lbs. and a wing span of more than six feet.

Crested francolin.

The beautiful Namaqua dove.   It has a very long tail.

Brown snake eagle.

Green pigeon.

Northern red-billed hornbill.

Von Der Deckens hornbill.