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.
We just got back from our Croatia trip today so still going through the photos. This was my first out-of-the-country non animal trip in a while so there won’t be as many posts here on the blog. That being said, Croatia really is a beautiful country and I took plenty of photos of the Adriatic and the towns that seem to spill into it. This was shot from the balcony of our hotel in Dubrovnik. You can see the Old Town off in the distance to the left of the sun (we were actually a lot closer than it appears here in this wide angle photo). The water couldn’t be more ideal for swimming, and we made sure to take advantage of that fact on a daily basis. More from Croatia later this week, but now time for some sleep.
This will be my last post for two weeks as I head out on vacation this weekend (a non-wildlife trip for the first time in a while — island hopping in Croatia — but I’ll still try and bring back some interesting shots).
As for the ever popular creature above, I posted a similar shot with a tighter crop of this tarsier a while ago, but I think I like this wider crop and lighting better. This is one of the shots that I took with a long exposure to use ambient light and the light of the moon, rather than flash (the tarsier was still just long enough to get the shot). Enjoy, and check back in a couple of weeks.
Not a good shot technically, but this was the best I could do with the jungle cats of India. These elusive felines aren’t much bigger than a house cat. In fact, as you can see, they look very similar to the average domestic cat. This one was in Kanha National Park in Madhya, Pradesh in central India.
This leopard was in an area of the Masai Mara that didn’t allow off-road driving. We watched from quite a distance trying to predict which way she would move. Several other vehicles were in the area and we decided to distance ourselves as much as possible from them. It was the right decision. When the leopard finally started to move she came right toward us, passing about ten feet from our vehicle and allowing me to get some nice close ups.
I also came across quite a few of these California ground squirrels last weekend in La Jolla. They were quite common on the cliffs along the beach. They obviously eat well. This one, in fact, may have been the fattest squirrel I’ve ever seen.
Life appears good for this young harbor seal resting on shore at Children’s Pool Beach in La Jolla (just north of San Diego, California). The beach, however, has become a legal battleground between seal advocates on the one hand, and a faction of local residents on the other who want to return the beach to its previous life as a safe place to swim for children. I was down there this past weekend and was able to get a lot of good shots of the sixty or so seals that were on the beach and swimming in the water. More on these seals and the ongoing battle in a future post.
When you’re a polar bear, there’s really not much to do while waiting for the ice to freeze. These two males spent days playfighting and otherwise hanging around as they patiently waited for the Hudson Bay to freeze over so that they might journey out to hunt for seals.
There are three kinds of zebras in Africa. This is a Grevy’s zebra, the largest as well as the most endangered of the three. Unlike other zebras, the Grevy’s stripes do not extend to the belly. The two birds are called glossy starlings. They are quite common throughout much of Africa.