In search of a rhinoceros

​When I first travelled to Africa thirty years ago, I brought back many memories. Among the most indelible were those of Solomon – a gorilla I encountered high up in the Virunga Mountains – and the cattle egrets that loitered around the lowland animals.

But over the last twenty years, the héron garde-bœufs has become a common sight on the plains of the Lauragais, and this morning a flock of them descended on my field in search of a rhinoceros, or at least a horse or donkey.

Another sign of climate change, say our leading ornithologists, but others will no doubt continue to deny it until they bump into Solomon on a dark night.