This past trip, I added the little bee-eater to my list of birds, and saw the white fronted and european bee-eater again. I’ve only ever seen the european bee-eater from far distances, so I am hoping some day I will have some nice close up shots to work with.
More pictures from my session at the Mkombe hide at Zimanga. The mousebirds were a favourite of the photo coordinator, and the bird she most hoped seeing when we started our hide session. The red faced mousebird only made brief appearance, but a good number of speckled mousebirds spent a great deal of time at the water.
Looking at the photos now, I find a resemblance between the mousebird and a cardinal (head and beak shape) though I must be honest I have not seen a cardinal other than in photos for over 30 years, so I could be completely wrong about that.
Wikipedia provides some information on the behaviour and habitat of the mousebird:
Here in southern BC, we have spent the last few days with lovely warm weather for February, but have been absolutely hammered with rain as well. This morning, I woke up to a reprieve from the rain and even a few hints of blue sky. As such, I finally got out on a morning walk with my camera. I can’t believe it is February and these are the first 2015 photos I am able to post. They aren’t the best eagle or osprey photos I have taken and the birds weren’t doing anything weird or wonderful. I am just so thrilled that I was able to have a dry walk and see some birds that I decided to share.
Based on the quality and direction of the light, and how desaturated the photos were, I decided to convert everything to black and white.
A friend of mine recently showed me some lovely photos she took of a Baltimore oriole, which inspired me to get to work on the photos I have of beautiful yellow birds – the southern masked weaver and spectacled weaver.
I was lucky enough to be able to watch the southern masked weavers crafting their nests in a tree in the back garden of the Wildlife ACT volunteer house at Zimanga, plus have them visit the water hole while we had time at the hides.
We came across a journey of giraffe during a mid-afternoon photo drive on Zimanga Game Reserve. Several of the males had gathered together away from the rest and were busily beating on each other using head, neck and horns. It only seemed to be play fighting, rather than any real push to establish dominance as they seemed to far too young for that.
From Wikipedia:
“Adult giraffes do not have strong social bonds, though they do gather in loose aggregations if they happen to be moving in the same general direction. Males establish social hierarchies through “necking”, which are combat bouts where the neck is used as a weapon. Dominant males gain mating access to females, which bear the sole responsibility for raising the young.”
Unlike the pygmy kingfisher, I didn’t have any success capturing the brown hooded kingfisher in the water. Next time! He did however provide me with lots of lovely photo opportunities. My favourite will probably be a surprise to most, but there is just something about it that makes me smile.
I’ve finally worked my way through all the photos that I took of the pygmy kingfisher at the Mkombe hide at Zimanga. Some of the action shots I’ve included are not as crisp as I would like, but I’ve posted them anyways as they do show a nice representation of what the pygmy kingfisher looks like in flight and when coming out of the water. The sole crisp water shot that I managed to capture was done by pre-focusing on the spot I thought it would fly to (an ounce of technique and a pound of luck).