Birder came home from African holiday with hole in her head - but lived to tell the tale

The remarkable adventures of a globetrotting schoolgirl birder 

                                                        

SHORTLY before the end of a birding holiday with her parents in Ghana, nine-year-old Mya-Rose Craig detected on the top of her head a small swelling, one not dissimilar to that of a mosquito bite except that it hurt when she poked it.

A couple of days later, a close perusal by her mother revealed a hole the size of a pea which, adding to her daughter's alarm, soon began to suppurate.

Back home in Bristol a few days later, an appointment was booked with her GP who spent 10 minutes poking around with a torch and tweezers before announcing (with a slight hint of exultation): "It's  not a wound at all but a hole, a breathing hole.

"There's a maggot living in your scalp!"

Given the option of having the creature removed or allowing it to become fully grown and exit of its own accord, the schoolgirl chose the former.

Easier said than done. The maggot had anchored itself to her flesh and refused to be moved.

The doctor than came up with a solution - plastering Vaseline over the hole, thereby forcing the 5-cm long creature to emerge in order to avoid suffocation.

Although it took a painful three attempts, Mya-Rose was ever such a brave little soldier - she did not cry once - and the doctor eventually managed to pull out the creature with tweezers.

                                          

The author - with her trusty Swarovski binoculars

Thereupon, he popped it into a test tube which was duly corked and taken to colleagues for them to peer at with curiosity.

The schoolgirl  was simultaneously fascinated and sickened at having hosted  the squirming and wriggling creature but, 10 years on, she has suffered no adverse after-effects.

To to this day, however, when washing her hair, she can still feel the small raised scar where the tumbu fly maggot once lived.

Mya-Rose's bizarre experience is recounted in her absorbing book, Birdgirl, which has just been published in paperback version.

Far from being put off by this disconcerting ordeal, she says Ghana ramped up her appetite for seeing rare birds and endemic species - "and an alien worm was not going to stop me".

That is perhaps unsurprising given that, within 12 days, mostly spent within the Kakum National Park, her eyes had feasted on  the likes of:

*African emerald cuckoo

* White-crested hornbill

* Yellow-billed turaco

* African broadbill

*Yellow-headed picathartes

Fast forward 10 years and the globe-trotting author has now, with her parents, visited no fewer than 40 countries across seven continents.

Having witnessed a remarkable 5,000 species, she has  seen almost half of those currently known to the ornithological world. 

Among her sightings of vagrants to Britain have been a sandhill crane in Orkney, an eastern crowned warbler near South Shields in Co Durham, and a glaucous-winged gull on Teesside.

Among the stars on the Craig family's travels have been:

* Madagascan serpent eagle

* Beesleys lark

* Ivory-breasted pitta

* Foothill screech owl

* Sword-billed hummingbird 

* Golden-backed mountain tanager

* Fuertes parrot

* Bali starling

* Southern cassowary

* Regent bowerbird

* Magnificent riflebird

* Shoebill

* King penguin

* Californian condor

Her favourite? Harpy eagle, detected in  the Brazilian rainforest, of which she exults: "Elation, surprise, relief - emotions coming thick and fast.

"I slowed my breathing and focused on the bird, drinking it in.

"For nine years, I had longed to see this fine animal and now hear it was."

But Mya-Rose is not a simply a ticker. As is abundantly clear, she appreciates and, indeed, honours birds, rare or otherwise, for the many ways in which they have enriched her life.

In her introduction, she writes: "There is nothing like the moment when your target bird appears.

"You may have been waiting for hours, staring into a bleak sky, chilled to the bone by the wind, or sweating in the stifling heat of a jungle, unable to swat away the annoying mosquitoes for fear of disturbing your bird.

"But when it appears, it is a moment of 'wow' and 'look at that'; it will always be joyous, always a celebration.

"And when you share these minutes with like-minded souls there is nothing better.

"It is like your football team has just scored the winning goal in a cup final.

"And it is a feeling that lasts through the day, the next day and beyond.

"It is is a singular experience, a nirvana - a gorgeous creature to be burned into memory for ever."

Birdgirl is published in paperback (£10.99) by Vintage/ Penguin.

                                             

Mya-Rose's favourite bird - harpy eagle seen here with mammal prey (photo: http://www.birdphotos.com / Wikimedia Commons)