Category: Animals

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2020-03-01: Leopards at night

Leopards are generally more active at night than during the daytime, which can make for challenging, yet thrilling, sightings when you are out on a game drive.  I am always interested first in enjoying the sighting, with the photos coming second, but that’s not to say that I don’t like to try and capture images under these more challenging conditions.

Conditions vary whether it is dawn / dusk or at night; dawn and dusk images may be able to be captured with the ambient light available, but will generally need a really high ISO and as such be noisy.  Those captured after dark will generally be lit by spot light, sometimes with a red filter, so there can be strange colour casts, blown out highlights and all sorts of other challenges.   But, if you are capturing images in that situation, you are witnessing an apex predator in its natural environment, and what could be better than that?

I hope you enjoy my selection of images for the day; wishing everyone a great week, and a great month ahead.

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2020-02-17: Monochrome Monday

Another week begins!  I was scanning through my image catalogue and a zebra image caught my eye, so I decided to go with that for my monochrome Monday post.

I don’t have any interesting tidbits to share about zebras today, just a few images.  I’m sure if you wanted to know interesting facts about zebras, you could head on over to Wikipedia and learn everything you wanted to know, and then some 🙂  I recall watching an episode about them some time ago on the David Attenborough series Natural Curiosities; a great one to tune into if you happen to come across it.

That’s all for today as Spencer is stamping his feet at me, wanting to head out on his afternoon walk.

Hope you have a great week!

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On anyone else, this hair would probably be called a bad dye job.
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You never know who you’ll meet up with on the road while on a game drive.  There were zebra all around the road, and a small group of giraffe off in the distance.
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Just a guess, but I think they heard something towards the left 🙂
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A group of mares pause while a foal has a feed.
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2020-02-16: Elephants

One thing I have really been noticing the last couple of weeks is that I am getting to the end of the day, or the end of the week, long before the end of my to-do list.  It’s one of those things that seems to go in waves for me, and I think while I have my coffee tomorrow morning I need to spend a bit of time figuring out how better to spend my time, so I can still fit in the things that bring me joy, like my photography.

While I have had my computer back a week now, late this afternoon was the first time I have had an opportunity to work on any of my photography.  As such, I wanted to spend the little bit of time I had editing something that I really enjoyed; hence elephants as my topic for today.

These images were all from the first game drive of my last trip to South Africa.  The trip started off with an abundance of elephants, and continued on that way the entire time, much to my delight.  What was also really lovely is we ended up at each camp on a vehicle with safari newbies, and seeing their joy, amazement and excitement when seeing all the animals and birds made the experience all that much more enjoyable for me.

Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead!

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2020-02-10: Monochrome Monday

Happy Monday!  I am super grateful that I was able to get my computer back out of sick bay this weekend, complete with a new SSD drive, so hopefully it’ll be running well for a couple more years (at least).

I got the computer back, but haven’t actually had an opportunity to do anything with it in terms of editing.  Even with the system restore from a backup, there are little quirks that need to be addressed.

So here is a giraffe image I edited a few weeks ago and had ready to go.  These two were part of a group of about 6-8 that were spread out amongst the acacia trees.  We were on our way to check on a lion sighting from the previous day, so we didn’t spend too much time with these guys.  Not that we needed to rush to the lions; they had barely moved since the previous day.

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Wishing everyone a wonderful week!

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2020-01-26: Hyenas

Hyenas are an often misunderstood and much maligned creature, seen as a lowly scavenger, robbing the kills of leopards, wild dogs, cheetah and even lions (given the right circumstances).  From all that guides over the years have told me, and my watching many nature documentaries, I know that while they do scavenge a lot, and provide a necessary ecosystem service in that regard, they are also skillful hunters, and have very interesting clan dynamics, led by an alpha female.

Hyenas can be pretty hit and miss on safari though.  Unless there is an active den on the property, guides (that I have been with) don’t generally seek them out or follow their tracks.  It’s more a situation of randomly running across them, and then stopping to watch for a few minutes before moving on.  If there is a den on the property with little ones, it can be a very enjoyable sighting, as the cubs can be quite boisterous and inquisitive.  I still recall my first time in the Okavango Delta, sitting just after sunset at a den and a cub came over and started chewing on the tires of the vehicle, getting into it the way my dog used to take to his squeaky toys as a pup.

No such luck with young cubs this past trip, but here are a few of the images I did capture of hyenas.

Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead.

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The only cubs I saw on this past trip; a pair of juveniles with Mom, and another hyena hanging around in the background.
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This hyenas was sniffing around as there was a kill nearby that had been stashed in a tree by a leopard.
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This hyena seemed to be having quite a good time in the water; it definitely wasn’t warm enough for it to need to be cooling off.
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A very alert herd of impala, watching the approach of a lone hyena.

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Oh no, here comes trouble!

 

 

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2020-01-20: Monochrome Monday

It was awesome to spend some time with the dogs on an afternoon game drive during my last trip.  I’ve been fortunate to see wild dogs on almost all of my trips to Africa, but I still get really excited when a ranger tells me that dogs have been spotted on the property.

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