2020-07-05: Photo Art – Rhinos

For my Dad’s Father’s Day gift, I adopted a blind rhino named Maxwell, being cared for at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, in his name. Rhino’s were the animal he was most excited to see on our first trip to South Africa, so it seemed like a good fit (and proved to be a very popular gift, as was the elephant I adopted for my Mom for Mother’s Day).

I try to make homemade cards whenever possible, and created these two images to make my Dad’s Father’s Day card. These were done with images I shot my last time in South Africa, using a variety of filters in the Topaz Studio program.

2020-06-28: Hummingbirds

For a while it seemed that all hope was lost for hummingbirds this season, as all but a couple disappeared within two weeks of showing up (that’s what Prince George weather does to you!). But I kept filling my feeders for the couple that were around and enjoyed the brief glimpses that I had. Then quite suddenly it was a flurry if activity, at one point counting 15 individuals, and I’ve been filling up 5 feeders at least once every second day, if not more often.

They don’t stick around long so I am enjoying it while it lasts, although I do call them my little piggy birds.

While I would much prefer to get shots in a natural environment, we have so few flowers that the feeders are the only attractant, and they disappear deep into the forest when not feeding.

Hummingbirds galore!

2020-06-22: Monochrome Monday

Even though it was the rutting season, when males can begin to lose condition from spending all of their time and energy fighting over access to females, this one looked to be in fine form, with a shiny coat and a small herd to call his own… at least for a day or two.

Impala are beautiful animals and definitely interesting to watch while out in the bush. But the sound the males make when they are fighting, that is something else.

An impala ram patrolling at the outskirts of the small herd he had gathered together. South Africa, May 2019.

2020-06-21: World Giraffe Day

Today is World Giraffe Day, and an opportunity for me to not have to think what to post! I can just share a few images of these adorable and goofy looking animals 🙂

A pair of giraffes in the late afternoon light.
A very interesting, and very sad sighting. This was from my 2017 trip to the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. We found signs of a lion and followed it until we also found drag marks from a kill, and ended up, seeing this mama giraffe holding vigil while her youngster was being dined on by a lone lioness in the bushes. The track marks shows that the giraffe had tried to charge the lioness, but sadly nothing could bring back her calf. I have a few other shots from this sighting that you can find in an older post here.

This image was so brightly coloured it looked like some type of HDR image; so I had to do some serious desaturation to get it to look reasonable. I’m not sure what causes that to happen every once in a while, but it does make for interesting editing. This young giraffe was part of a group of 4 or 5 that were scattered in the trees enjoying some browsing.

Have a great week everyone!

2020-06-14: Civet

On my 6th journey to Africa, I was fortunate enough to add two new species to my wildlife list; both on the same evening and both quick, blink and you’d miss them, type sightings. And both on the 1st game drive of the trip 🙂 The first were honey badgers, which I had desperately wanted to see (and if you missed the photos of those, you can find them here) and the second is the civet that is pictured below.

I don’t know much about civets, and as we had such a jam packed game drive, while sharing our vehicle with some wonderful safari newbies, our guide didn’t have a chance to provide too much of a chat about them. While I am sure any search engine could yield me more information on a civet than I ever could need to know, I might just leave this one and hope I see one again, and get a bit more information on it while out in the field. As if I needed another excuse to return to Africa!

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

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