Although the kori bustard avoids flying if possible, it is the heaviest bird capable of flight in the world. Large males can weigh up to 45 pounds and have a wingspan of almost 10 feet. Most often they are spotted foraging for seeds and lizards on the flat grasslands of the African savanna. This one was photographed in the Central Kalahari desert of Botswana.
The dwarf mongoose has the distinction of being the smallest carnivore in Africa. They mostly eat insects like grasshoppers, beetles and spiders, but will occasionally grab a smaller bird or lizard. The light wasn’t great when I came across this one in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, but I was able to get a few shots in in even — if not ideal — light.
They can be found pretty much anywhere in this country, but it’s still exciting every time I see a red fox. This one was running past me on a snow covered road in Yellowstone National Park. At times they can be very tolerant of people and this guy barely acknowledged my presence.
Lilac breasted rollers are pretty common throughout much of Africa. Unlike a lot of birds, both males and females look pretty much the same — very colorful. This one was in the Linyanti Swamp area of northern Botswana.
Back for another post, my favorite primate, the black-crested macaque, this time letting out a big yawn. For those new to the blog, these guys are critically endangered and live in Tangkoko National Park in the extreme northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Here’s another one taken at the end of the day in the central Kalahari Desert of Botswana. This ostrich was running across the desert pan as the much smaller guinea fowl scattered. Always nice to get rim lighting on a subject with such a distinctive shape.
The way I see it, you can never get enough meerkats — so here’s yet another post. It was late in the day and the rest of the clan had already disappeared into their burrows for the night. These two were among the last hold outs, hanging strong until the last of the sun’s rays had vanished. And yes, a group of meerkats is called a clan. It can also be called a mob or a gang.
A lot of people have been asking me about depth of field and f-stops lately, so here’s a good example of what your camera’s aperture can do. The first shot was at a wide aperture of f/5.6, while the second, was at f/18. Ordinarily on a landscape shot like this, I’d opt for the smaller aperture of f/18 in order to get edge to edge sharpness, but on this example I actually think I like the first one better because of its odd sense of motion. These are blue columbines, the state flower of Colorado. The location was in the northern part of the state up by the Wyoming border.
Here’s another of the black bear cubs that I saw at a rehabilitation center in South Dakota. Black bears can be any shade of black, brown, cinnamon, or even white. This guy didn’t seem too enthused to be getting his picture taken.
This is an agile gibbon, also known as a black-handed gibbon. You can tell that this one is a male by the white cheeks. He was quite habituated and very curious about me and my guide. In fact, he was hanging only about a foot or so from the front of my wide angle lens when I took this picture. We were in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo.