Agouti’s are native to Central America and resemble guinea pigs, but they are larger and with longer legs. This one was photographed early one morning in Pavones, Costa Rica. They are fairly common in rain forests and I saw quite a few while hiking throughout several areas of Costa Rica.
This little bird is called a little bee eater. They are fairly common throughout much of Africa. This one was in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. I liked the nice clean background and tried to include more of it in the composition.
I figured why not keep things in Australia for another day. This is a green ringtail possum, also photographed in the Atherton Tablelands area of Queensland in the northeast area of the country. Like other possums, the green ringtail is strictly nocturnal. Unlike other possums, the green ringtail practices what is known as coprophagy. What is coprophagy you ask? The practice of eating one’s own feces. Here’s to not being a green ringtail possum.
This is an oldie — and a rarity — from my trip to Australia back in 2005. I was searching for platypus early one morning in the town of Yungaburra when I spotted this Lumhotz’s tree kangaroo in a tree across the river. Usually nocturnal, this guy was up a little past his bedtime. They almost look more like a primate than a marsupial and they are only found in northeastern Queensland.
A little more than a year ago, I posted a very similar shot of the Joshua Tree landscape and the desert in bloom. This photo, however, shows more of that hairy prickly pear cactus in the foreground that kind of looks like an old man’s beard. The desert blooms very quickly and unpredictably. I was lucky on this trip to catch it in all its glory.
I was in a canoe late in the day in Madidi National Park in Bolivia when I saw a small troop of red howler monkeys. They were in the trees along the edge of the lake and appeared to be settling in for the night. This guy was the alpha male of the troop and was making sure that all the other monkeys made it to the resting spot safely.
In honor of Botswana’s first ever Olympic medal last night (a silver in the 800 meters) I thought I’d post another of that country’s most ferocious residents — the fun loving honey badger. This guy was on the prowl late in the afternoon in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. He walked right through our camp while I was hidden in a makeshift blind consisting of about eight discarded boxes from the local villagers.
Sometimes you need a hand in there to get a sense of scale. This was a little leaf-tailed gecko that my guide found one night while we were out spotlighting in Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar. In my three weeks in the country, I saw both geckos and chameleons that were as small as an inch long, while others were over two feet.
This pheasant-sized bird is quite the character in the rain forests of South America. A bit ungainly and almost geeky looking, but also with some attractive coloring around the face. Hoatzins are also called stink birds. Unique among birds, their diet consists solely of leaves and this is what causes the cow-manure like smell that they emit. I liked the way that this guy was framed by all that foliage. The photo was taken in Madidi National Park in Bolivia.
When it’s getting late and I’m too tired to search through my files for a photo of the day, I can always count on an orangutan. In this case two of them. These guys were swinging through the jungle in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo.