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.
When a springbok pronks like this, it is warning would-be predators not to bother — that it is healthy and not worth the effort to try and catch. I suppose it works sometimes, not others. I photographed this springbok early in the morning in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve of Botswana.
A chameleon’s tongue can be one and a half to two times its body length. The strike for prey happens so fast that it’s hard to get a picture (usually about 0.07 seconds). In my three weeks in Madagascar, I only had two opportunities to see and catch a tongue shot. This is one of them.
I’ve been thinking about Badlands National Park lately and wanting to get back out there sometime soon. This photo was taken one stormy afternoon back in 2008. Beyond the spectacular landscapes, the park is full of easily seen wildlife, including bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, coyote, prairie dogs and the rare and endangered black footed ferret (which I’ve yet to see).
Nothing much going on here, just a giraffe sticking out its tongue. This one was taken in Lewa in Kenya.
This is a male red-chested sunbird that I photographed in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. The long curved bill is used to extract nectar from flowers. Uganda is one of the best places in the world for birding due to its fortunate geographic positioning between the savannah to the east, the sub-sahara region to the north and the jungle to the west.
These are the Hanuman langurs that I saw all over the place in the national parks of India. It seemed that every adult female was with a baby. In fact, they practice what is known as alloparenting — which means that a baby can be given to, and raised, by a non-biological mother.
Okay, I know I’ve posted quite a few harbor seals lately, but I really can’t get enough of these guys. This one looked like he had quite the headache. As with the other two harbor seal posts lately, this was taken at Children’s Pool Beach in La Jolla, California.
Here’s another species of cactus, this time in Anza-Borrego State Park in southern California. It was getting dark when I took this shot and I ended it up with quite a few pieces of the prickly stuff stuck to my legs by the time I made it back to the car.