I was going through my files tonight and came across these two shots from Olympic National Park in Washington. In certain areas of the park, the forests can be very lush — everything covered in a coat of moss and dripping with vegetation. In the first photo, I used a 35mm focal length which eliminates any sort of extreme distortion when it comes to straight lines. In the second shot, I used a wide 17mm lens which really distorts the lines of the trees, but also creates a nice effect and sense of scale.
Usually jackals run away if you approach them too closely, but this guy seemed as curious about me as I was about him. I was even able to get out of the safari vehicle and down on the ground for some low angle shooting. He kept on moving closer and closer, sniffing the air every five steps or so. Eventually he passed by me about twenty feet away and headed on his way.
As the name suggests, bee eaters like to eat bees. They tend to sit on familiar perches for a while, then dart off to attempt mid-air grabs — usually of bees, but also wasps and flying ants. They won’t eat the bee at first, but will smash it against the perch to remove any stingers. These bee eaters were photographed in Bandhavgarh National Park in India.
This is a banded mongoose, photographed in the Masai Mara of Kenya. Unlike other mongoose species that live solitary lives, the banded mongoose lives in colonies. This particular mongoose and the rest of its colony lived in a network of burrows that was right next to a bat eared fox den. The banded mongoose will also live in close proximity to baboons and warthogs — foraging and actually being handled by the former, and picking ticks from the latter.
Servals are nocturnal and hunt mostly at night. We were lucky to catch this one in the late afternoon as it was heading out for the night. I previously posted another shot of this serval — more of a portrait. It gave us several different shot opportunities as it slowly got up from its hiding place in the grass when it realized we were onto him/her. It then took a few slow steps, then a few quicker ones, before leaping away. I captured a bit more motion blur than ideal in this photo, but there wasn’t much light and my shutter was pretty slow. Even so, I ended up liking the effect.
When giraffes fight, they use their long necks to try and punish their opponents. The behavior is called necking and we only saw it once when we were in Kenya. These two males were really going at it, slapping each other with their heads, both landing blows here and there, but neither really delivering a knock out punch. Eventually they grew tired of whatever it was that they were fighting about and they resumed foraging.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted Oriental scops owls. This species is called the Indian scops owl. It was taken on the same night — when we were able to locate four different kinds of owls in one relatively small area. By being so close to the owls (as well as by getting the flash off the top of my camera with a synch chord) I was able to get these shots without any red eye issues.
It was fun to watch the peacocks displaying while in India’s national parks. Although I was impressed, none of the peahens seemed to be, as they went about their business plucking insects and seeds from the ground. Eventually the peacocks would give up and continue foraging themselves. Just so we’re all clear, the male is the peacock, the female is the peahen, and both are peafowl.
I realize that these two shots aren’t much photographically, but what I wanted to show was just how powerful the male tigers are, and how bulky their upper arms are compared to the females (all the tiger shots that I’ve posted so far have been females). This guy was walking along a ridge and kept his gaze forward, for the most part. In a future post, I’ll upload a more interesting shot of this guy.
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