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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Farnboro John" data-source="post: 3597994" data-attributes="member: 36432">Our bus was on the edge of the village, with only a short walk to the cliff edge of a substantial wadi. The cliffs were home to a herd of Nubian Ibex  - females, kids and some adolescent males. We scanned the wadi without success and photographed the Ibex as they wandered around our gaff and browsed the bushes within the village.We had arranged to undertake a night drive with Tomer Ben-Yehuda, a local mammal-watcher and someone we were virtually connected to via Jon Hall's mammal watching site. Tomer managed to find us and we all piled into the Duster to start with a dusk watch at the vulture restaurant. This was a bust though we saw a few Dorcas Gazelles scattered across the desert.As always when you are intent on a night drive, it took ages to get dark! Once it did we crowded in and set off along a nearby track that Tomer reckoned was a likely site for Striped Hyena and Golden Jackal. It may have been but they weren't playing for us.... Eventually we gave up on that track and went to try one up the back of Mitzpe Ramon, which turned out at least to be stuffed with desert form Red Foxes (only the faces are red, the remainder being a dull greyish that matches the local substrate). Better than nothing, especially when we found one curled up on a hillside and determined not to move.Returning to the village, we found the truck-bomb-proof gate shut and no means of opening it. You are kidding. After all this we don't get to drive in and straight to the accommodation? Pants. Tomer's car was outside so he was able to get straight off. We sat in the car till fortunately one of the locals decided to go out for some reason and we nipped through the gate as he came out.Driving back to the bus we spotted a White-breasted Hedgehog in the road. Whoopee! Of course we all had the wrong lenses on, so we quickly changed them, tumbled out of the car and - no hedgehog. What? Where's it gone? Don't say we've met the Usain Bolt of the hedgehog world..... but we had. We ran about, flashed our torches all over the landscape and very soon had to conclude we had been outsprinted by the prickly insectivore. Hadn't been so embarrassed since I was in Florida and a Gopher Tortoise zipped down a hole while I was changing lenses (admittedly those had been Pentax screw mounts) - being outsmarted by the lightning speed of a tortoise is as bad as it gets. But the same treatment from a hedgehog is quite bad enough!We collapsed into our smeggy beds and fell asleep.John</blockquote>

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