The Stradun is the main street through the center of old town Dubrovnik. I took this shot at about 5 AM when there was no one around. By noon each day — after all the cruise ships drop off the thousands of tourists that join forces with all those that stay at the hotels just beyond the city walls — The Stradun gets packed with people. I, of course, much prefer it when like this.
I figured it was about time for another look at the meerkats. This go round it’s one guard communicating with another guard. They have quite the system, each meerkat taking a shift as a lookout while the rest of the troop forages.
Back down to Brazil for a giant river otter mother and one of her pups feeding on a catfish. I saw quite a few of these enormous otters when I was in the Pantanal, cruising up and down the various rivers and tributaries of South America’s great flooded wetland.
These three lion cub siblings seemed to be lining up for their family portrait. This one was taken in the Laikipia region of Kenya.
In honor of my frog loving little sister who’s birthday it is today, I had to search through my archives to find a suitable subject. This beauty is a Madagascar reed frog that I photographed in the town of Maroantsetra. I was stranded in the town due to bad weather and spent several days just walking around the grounds of the hotel I was staying at, looking for whatever animals I could find. When young, these frogs are completely yellow (see this link to a juvenile that I saw the next day) but when they mature, they get that nice light blue color on their backs. Happy birthday Mo.
This view of Dubrovnik is from the opposite side of the city from last week’s post. I decided to get up very early one morning and get as many photos as I could before the cruise ships dropped off all the tourists. It was still about 45 minutes to sunrise when I took this one.
For those of you who have been following my blog for awhile, you might remember the weekly Friday Frog. I don’t know that I’m ready to start posting a frog every Friday again, but here’s an old one that I always liked. This was taken in Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge in southern Indiana.
Here’s another harbor seal from Children’s Pool Beach in La Jolla, California. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that an ongoing legal battle has been stalled in the local courts between seal advocates on the one hand and locals on the other who want to return the beach to human bathers. The story goes back to 1931 when a local philanthropist built a sea wall to protect the beach from dangerous surf and dedicated it to the city under the condition that “said lands shall be devoted exclusively to public park, bathing pool for children, parkway, highway, playground, and recreational purposes.” I guess they didn’t count on the seals liking it so much. My vote clearly goes to the seals (and it seems that most of the locals do prefer the seals too, as it has become a popular tourist attraction).
The island of Hvar is best known these days as Croatia’s most stylish destination to dock your yacht. A little further from the restaurants and shops that line the harbor, however, can be found fields of lavender. In fact, Hvar is often referred to as the “island of lavender” and the annual lavender festival just so happened to coincide with the weekend of our visit.
Here’s a closer look at Dubrovnik — one of the best preserved, walled medieval cities in the world. This photo was obviously taken just outside of those walls. During the war in 1991, the city was under constant bombardment for seven months. It received significant damage from the shelling and most of the old rooftops have since been replaced. The locals, however, aided by the giant walls, were able to hold “Old Town” and keep the Serb-Montenegrin forces out. One of Dubrovnik’s most popular tourist attractions is to walk the circumference of the city on top of the wall.