This one is from a trip to Maine a few years back. I was at Baxter State Park when I saw this moose cow in the middle of Sandy Stream Pond. Moose like the nutrient rich vegetation that sits on the bottom of the pond. She was out there for what seemed like an hour, grazing under water and allowing me to get many shots.
During the day, hippos rarely leave the water, but at night they typically sleep on land. They are very susceptible to sunburn and as soon as the sun starts to get hot, they get back in the water. This was first thing in the morning when the sun just broke the horizon and several hippos were out foraging on the plains of the Masai Mara in Kenya. In the background, a few buffalo keep a close watch on their often cantankerous neighbors.
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.