Chamois
This chamois, high in the Italain Alps, was giving me his best Zoolander look. The name chamois obviously raises a few questions, so a bit of history is in order. The words shammy and chamois were commonly used in the south of France in the late 1600’s to describe a soft leather specially prepared from any goat-like creature, and in particular the European antelope. The leather was of premium quality and used primarily in the making of gloves. In a nearby town, the leather was tanned in cod oil, which is when it was discovered to have incredible absorbency qualities. This was perfect for the soft white gloves worn by carriage footmen, who were responsible for the care and polishing of carriages. Later on, chauffeurs in the early 1900s used chamois gloves to dry windshields for better visibility. Today, of course, the common chamois is not leather at all, but a synthetic material with a high absorbency rating. As always, I aim to educate.
White necked herons are a fairly common sight along the rivers of Brazil’s Pantanal region. I was in a small boat, floating quietly past while this one was searching for fish.
Toads may fall short in the glamour department, but they make up for it in personality. This handsome little specimen was rustling around in the leaf litter along the side of a trail in Baxter State Park in Maine.
In all my travels, Tiskita Lodge in Pavones, Costa Rica was one of my favorite places to stay. Down near the Panama border, it’s not easy to get to, but well worth the effort once you do. I probably saw a greater variety of wildlife just walking around the grounds of the lodge than I’ve seen anywhere else. I was there for four days, and each afternoon a small troop of squirrel monkeys would make an appearance just outside my room to feed on the various fruiting trees. They were just one of the many species that I could literally photograph from the hammock on my front porch.
Time for some random kangaroo facts to enrich everyone’s lives. A female is called a flyer. The males are called either a boomer or a buck. And the young, of course, are called joeys. These two here, a mother red kangaroo and her joey, are in a place called Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia.
I know I’ve been posting a lot of river otters lately, but I keep finding new ones that I like. The otters work hard at keeping a few holes in the ice open throughout the cold winter. The holes also make it an easy time of year to photograph them because (with only three or four holes in a given lake) you always know where they are going to surface.
This little guy is called a spot flanked poison dart frog. The photograph was taken in Madidi National Park in the Bolivian Amazon. This is a very small frog and I needed my macro setup to get the shot. Other than the name, I really don’t know too much about this frog and not much is written about them online.