It may be that you have gained an impression from all this Braidwood-centric content that the raptor obsession is a new thing. You would be wrong! In fact, birds of prey have long fascinated me, and once or twice over the years have been the subject of my probing lens.

Possibly the first time the mystique and majesty of the big raptors became apparent was on a trip to visit William (he of the exploding Anglia), who had moved with his family to Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands. The city of Mutare had sentimental associations for my family: allegedly, I was conceived there and we spent a couple of family holidays in the Vumba (now Bvumba) mountains, crossing the border into Mozambique to buy Portuguese rosé in wicker-wrapped bottles and fat prawns from the nearby port of Beira.

Anyway, among the many adventures we had, a particularly memorable foray was an afternoon on one of the high granite hills forming part of the bumpy ring that surrounds the city. Now, I have been convinced for 40 years that this hill was called Victoria Kop, but no amount of googling can locate anything like it. Yes, there are 20-odd individuals on Facebook called Victoria or Vicky Kop or Kopp, but no hill in Mutare. It’s a mystery — or an indication of the effects of age on memory. Do write in and set me straight!

Anyway, our leader was an individual I know only as Chunky — although we did quite a lot of hiking and camping with Chunky, I can honestly say I never knew his real moniker (not doing too well with the names, today, I’m afraid — but it really did happen — I have photographic evidence).

I’ll leave it to you to work out which one is me.

Getting to the summit involved some tricky climbing, starting with clambering through the branches of a huge wild fig tree whose trunk emerged from a fissure in the rock like some kind of organic lava, followed by scaling a tricky cliff-face without ropes and such luxuries. And that’s not all — once up there, it turned out that to view the eagle’s nest (objective of our climb), we had to drop a couple of metres down the vertiginous face into a boxy cage-like structure made of steel fence posts and wire netting, cantilevered over the void — not for for the dedicated sufferer of claustrophobia and/or vertigo.

Once in, though, we were treated to a close-up view of a Black Eagle’s home, complete with revolting fluffy chicks. Not having a camera at the time, I had to entrust these images to memory — easier to recall than various names, for some reason.

Then there was the time when, as an impoverished postgrad student, I house-sat for an elderly professor. A devoted horticulturalist, her garden might have been the setting for The Secret Garden, as much a literary creation as a horticultural one. Narrow paths snaked between massive overhanging rose bushes; lovingly tended beds contained Wordsworthian daffodils, John Clare’s primroses, Plath’s tulips. And more roses than you could shake a stick at.

And at the back of the house sat a chicken-wire enclosure with a tin roof, lined with tenderly-nurtured seedlings — future denizens of the fantasy garden. Early one morning as I gawped and stretched while looking out of the window, I saw something moving about within. On closer inspection, it appeared to be a large bird — and its large, yellow, predatory feet had flattened every single seedling as it hopped ceaselessly from shelf to shelf in search of an exit from the enclosure.

Some experts from the university’s zoology department arrived to capture it. It was an African Goshawk (accipiter tachiro). Its vividly striped chest and pearly dark grey wings were beautiful — and its remorseless eyes gave a view into the soul of an implacable predator. How had it got in? There was a tiny gap above the door — the poor bird must have flown in while pursuing some kind of prey in the dark of night. When she returned, my professor put a brave face on it, but never invited me to house-sit again.

In fact, Africa is a great place for bird-life, including raptors. On later trips to South Africa and Namibia, equipped with a longish lens, I had the opportunity, if not the skill, to capture a range of different feathery hunters. These are hardly publication-quality pics, but they do trace some stops along the raptor trail.

Above are some kestrels at Sossusvlei in Namibia. You wouldn’t think those iron-red dunes would house sufficient rodents and lizards to sustain them, but there they are. Below is another Namibian Kestrel, this time captured at Etosha National Park.

Here we have a Pale Chanting Goshawk (melierax canorus) at Kruger National Park. And to crown it all, also from Kruger, a magnificent Martial Eagle (polemaetus bellicosus) with the blood of its last meal still on its beak. Nature red in tooth and claw indeed. Have you ever seen such a baleful stare?

What I would give for a long trek through Southern Africa’s wild places with better photo technique, a pocketful of batteries and memory cards — and the current iteration of that embarrassing lens.