This will be the last post for a while as I head to Botswana tomorrow for a two week safari. In the meantime, thought I’d post one more polar bear from Seal River in Manitoba, Canada. This guy started sliding across the ice and grabbed at his leg as if he could somehow stop the sliding. Enjoy, and see you in two weeks with a bunch of new creatures.
This newborn elephant seal seems a bit disinterested as its mother delivers some sort of a lecture. I was just north of San Simeon, California this past winter and newborn pups and their mothers seemed to be everywhere.
This is a female Oustalet’s chameleon. We crossed paths one afternoon in Ankarafantsika National Park in Western Madagascar. Madagascar is where half of all the chameleons on earth can be found.
To move through the jungle, orangutans don’t jump from branch to branch, but instead swing on vines and the flexible trunks and branches of thinner trees. This guy had just stopped to investigate my strange bald head, before swinging on past.
Unlike animals with horns, those with antlers grow and then shed a new set every year. It was the end of May when I photographed this male elk in Yellowstone. His antlers will continue to grow throughout the summer and then in the fall, the velvet skin that you see here will be shed to reveal the hard bone like material underneath. The elk will retain these velvet-less antlers until they are eventually dropped altogether in the winter.
A bison walks along a shallow ridge line in Yellowstone National Park. This guy was taking his time catching up to the rest of the herd that had already descended to the far side of that small hill. Earlier a few had stopped to drink from the lake.
Sifakas are a genus of lemur named for their “shi-fak” alarm call. There are several different species of sifaka, with this guy, the diademed sifaka being the largest among them. Diademed sifakas also happen to be one of the most interesting looking of all the lemurs, with their red eyes and golden, black and white fur. This was one of only two or three diademed sifakas that I saw while in the forests of Madagascar.
I didn’t post yesterday because I was stuck at the airport in Bangor, Maine due to bad weather. I went there to photograph puffins on Saturday morning and then drove up to Baxster State Park in search of moose. Unfortunately, it rained all day on Sunday and the moose were nowhere to be found. I decided to go for a hike anyway and just as I was about ready to give up and head for home, I stumbled across this little fawn. It must have been born the night before because I was in the exact same spot the previous evening and it wasn’t there. The mother wasn’t anywhere in sight, but hopefully was just hiding someplace nearby waiting for me to leave.
I didn’t see too many pronghorn on this most recent trip to Yellowstone, but there were a few out and about. In this photo, you can see the difference between the male and the female. The males have the prominent pronged horns whereas the females also have horns, but they are much smaller and often times barely visible.
