Tag Archives: wildlife

What a Selection of Fungi

The colder, damper conditions that fall and winter bring have resulted in plenty of fungi appearing and that seems to have been reflected in the blog recently.  I seem to be adding pictures of fungi a lot.  This time they are from the areas around where I work.  At lunchtime I walk down the hill to get something to drink with my lunch and, with these guys springing up along the sidewalk and close by, it was time to get the phone out and capture some shots.  Modern phones are so useful in situations like this.

Butterfly on the Lavender

While playing with the macro lens, I have spent plenty of time watching the insects in the back yard as they feed on the flowers.  The butterflies are quite fascinating as they have a proboscis that they curl up when they are not using and then extend to extract the nectar from the flowers.  As I was observing them at work, it occurred to me that the stills didn’t really give a good way of seeing what they are doing.  Instead, I switched to video and filmed them as they fed on our lavender bushes.  Here is some video of them busily getting fed!

https://youtu.be/OpzZAb30sZs

Crow Plumage is Gorgeous in the Right Light

When people think of photographing birds, the more exotic types are going to probably be of more interest to many.  While I am obviously (if you follow this blog) partial to photographing an eagle or an owl, I also find the more common birds cool.  A pigeon has some amazing flying capabilities, gulls can look elegant in flight and crows have fantastic feather coloration.  One of them was sitting on a fence very close to me as I sat in the car.  The light was glinting off the feathers making the subtle colors show up nicely.  How could I not photograph it?  You might dismiss the average crow, but they can look very cool.

Which Elephants Make the Cut for the Blog?

Kenya and Tanzania both provided us with multiple opportunities to observe elephants.  Sure, I have seen elephants before including one encounter in the wild in South Africa.  None of these encounters in any way prepared me for the time with elephants we had on this trip.  There were so many of them, I was constantly taken aback by the experience.  They would be traveling in groups and often several groups would be together.  There were so many of them.

Each time we would come upon some, I would be momentarily amazed that there were elephants so close.  Then I would realize that there were more around than I had first thought.  They would be so close, so uninterested in us and so impressive.  There would be all ages with senior females, younger elephants and some tiny calves.  It was just incredible.

Seeing so many of them in lots of different places means it becomes harder to narrow down to a few for one post.  The early experiences made a big impression on me but the later ones were still outstanding.  In Amboseli, we ended up with the sun setting over Kilimanjaro as loads of elephants were grazing in the foreground.  At one point, we were standing up in the truck and everywhere I looked there were elephants feeding.  I took the phone out of my pocket and panned around to show just how many there were.  Truly amazing.

Another time we were crossing a river and there were loads of them in the water and along the banks.  They gradually made their way towards us and, at one point, an adult and a calf climbed the road away from the river and the view of them heading off was amazing.  Another time, we found some up on the top of the river bank.  They split up with some foraging along the shore and others fording the river to try their luck on the other side.

Another memorable moment was a lone male slowly heading by the road we were on.  We stopped to watch him for a while, and he turned and started heading towards us.  Having seen videos of elephants pushing vehicles out of their way, I was wondering whether we were going to have to make haste out of his way but apparently we were not his concern and we were able to stay and watch him for a while.

All of these moments were amazing but were not the sum of our encounters.  We had so many times with the elephants that I can’t count them.  I wish I could truly convey just how amazing they were.  Forget the closer moments.  Just watching a family of elephants in the water making their way through the foliage in the distance as they fed was fantastic.  I just love elephants – but then I doubt that is a controversial position.

I Love Hippos and I Wasn’t Disappointed

When going on a safari, there are animals that will be the ones many people will want to see most.  Lions, elephants, maybe rhinos will be top of the list.  I am not saying I didn’t want to see those because I clearly did but I have a fascination with hippos and seeing them was very high on the list of things I wanted.  Thankfully, we had plentiful opportunities to see them in various locations.

I knew that they were one of the more dangerous creatures, but we never got in any situation where they were a direct worry to us.  They tend to come out at night and feed before retreating to the water in the morning to stay cool and away from any predators.  Therefore, many of our sightings were when they were in rivers.  However, this wasn’t always the case.  We would see them wandering on land, heading through marshy ground and even asleep on the land.  I should note that one hippo we saw asleep on the land was showing signs of attack with wounds across its body so this may have been out of character.

We came upon one river that had loads of hippos in it.  We watched then for a while and then, as some of the other trucks pulled out, our guide moved us up into the dead end where they had come from.  This brought us in to sight of another big group of hippos way closer in.  It was amazing to see so many of them together.

What was the shot I wanted?  It had to be the mouth.  Hippos yawn and show off their large mouth and the huge teeth.  I so wanted to get that shot.  One hippo was in the water looking straight at me and I was just willing it to yawn but it didn’t oblige.  However, I did get some more distant shots when the full yawn was happening so that was really great.  They are such excellent creatures and, considering that they are vegetarians, ones that need to be treated with great caution.  What a treat.

Leopards Are Harder to Find

Our time in Kenya and Tanzania included plenty of lions but, when it came to the next big cat on the food chain, things were a lot less common.  The leopards were there to be seen but they were not anywhere near as numerous.  It doesn’t help that, unlike the lions that live in large prides, the leopards have a solitary existence.  If you are in a territory, it is one leopard that you are looking for.

We did have some encounters, though.  The first leopard we came across was at the beginning of the day as we headed out from the hotel.  We hadn’t got very far when our guide spotted a leopard sitting on a termite mound.  We stopped and got some shots of it and then tried to get closer but leopards are a lot more skittish than other cats and it didn’t take much to spook this one.  It ran off up the hills.

Our next encounter was with one that had been busy feeding.  On a couple of occasions, we had seen carcasses of animals up in trees where the leopard had pulled them.  In this case, the leopard had then taken to another tree to rest after its meal.  We were quite close beneath it, but it didn’t seem bothered about us and I don’t think it was likely to pounce down on us.  Instead, it was sleeping and barely recognizing our presence.

The other encounters we had were probably with the same leopard but this time down in some bushes alongside a river.  The first time the leopard was pretty well in the bushes and was lying down.  It didn’t seem intent on doing much and we left it after a short while.  Back in the same area on another day, it was on the move.  We were able to be ahead of it and it walked towards us before cutting back into the bushes and being lost from sight again.

The leopards are such powerful creatures, and they look far more menacing than, say, the cheetahs.  Their ability to haul a heavy animal up into a tree is impressive and, pound for pound, they are stronger than the lions.  However, the lions will still take them out if given the chance.  With overlapping territories, this is not something to be ruled out.  I’m glad we got the time with them that we did.

Getting Down to the Level of Fungi

Ever since I have had cameras with flip out screens, I have been far more likely to get down to the right level for a photo.  Lying on the ground was something I would only do in the right circumstances.  Walking through the arboretum with Nancy is not the right time to get grubby doing that.  However, now I can let the camera be low down and check the shots from a slightly more comfortable height.  This was the right thing to do when I was taking some shots of some mushrooms.  You get a totally different perspective from ground level!

Grebes Scooting Over the Bay

Earlier in the year, I was up at Juanita Bay before things got too warm to make it enjoyable.  We get plenty of ducks and coots on the bay but, on this occasion, there were a load of grebes on the water.  The types of grebes I grew up with a larger than the ones I saw here.  To be honest, I am not certain whether these were adults or juveniles because they seemed to have very small wings.  Maybe that is how they are, but it could be that they weren’t fully grown.  Maybe some of you know your birds well and can enlighten me.

Anyway, they would periodically get excited and start zipping around the bay.  They would be flapping these small wings furiously and just skimming across the water until they found somewhere that they were happier to be.  I don’t know whether this is just normal movement or that they were spooked by something but it was fascinating to watch them hurtling around.

One for Fans of Big Cat Diary

When I was a lot younger, I watched wildlife programs on the BBC.  There was a film maker that was on my local BBC region called Simon King.  He graduated to working in the Maasai Mara where he was on with another photographer and film maker who had been there for many years.  His name is Jonathan Scott.  He still lives in Kenya and, with his wife Angela who is also a photographer, can be seen out and about in the Mara covering the animals.  I was really pleased when we came across the pair of them.  He was driving their Land Rover with his wife in the back shooting out the side.  He had a camera mounted close but too.  I waved at him at one point and he smiled and waved back.  Had a bit of a fanboy moment!

Filming Crews and Their Serious Gear

We came upon a few filming crews while we were in the Maasai Mara.  There were professional photographers but more of the video teams.  National Geographic had a crew out working and there were others filming too.  You would sometimes find vehicles that were scouting crews for the filming.  The thing I found funny was that they often had signs saying that they were filming crews and not to follow them.  I might never have paid attention to them until I knew that they were filming crews and might well have good intel about where animals were!

Modified vehicles which allow the camera operator to sit outside the vehicle and shoot looked like just the sort of thing I would like to have.  They weren’t always in use, though.  I did see one operator sitting inside the vehicle with his feet up while checking stuff on his phone.  Looking at the very pricey lenses attached to the camera rigs was almost as fun as looking at the animals.  Nat Geo also had a vehicle with a gimbal mount out on the front of the vehicle.  It would have been fun to see that in use!

One thing that occurred to me as I watched these teams at work was the volume of material that they would collect that would be culled down to make a TV show.  Sure, this would be a vast amount of data to store and sort but how different this must be from the days of wet film.  Those crews shooting things like the early Big Cat Diaries must have been carrying a ton of stock and then had to manage all of it through processing and cataloging.  That must have been a very time consuming and expensive proposition.