This was an all or nothing weekend for me down in Florida. I was in search of the elusive Florida Panther, one of the rarest creatures on the planet, and I spent all my time trying to find one. As you can see from the above photo, I was not successful. Instead, you’ll have to settle for this Florida box turtle. Not quite as elusive. Not quite as spectacular. But a much more patient and accommodating subject. I took this photo in the Big Cypress National Preserve in the southwest corner of the state, where both the turtle and the panther live.
This photo shows just how big polar bears can really be. It was taken in the town of Churchill, about a 30 minute flight south of the lodge that I stayed at (there were no motorized vehicles anywhere near the lodge). We had a few hours to kill before catching our flight back to the States, so me and a couple of the guys rented a car and decided to go out and explore. We found a place where they breed a rare species of dog. The bears would come around to eat the dogs’ food (bears will eat anything while waiting for the Hudson Bay to freeze so that they can go out and feast upon their true favorite, ringed seals).
With all the mammals I’ve been posting lately, thought it was time for a nice bird. This is a campo troupial, also known as a campo oriole. They were fairly common around the lodges in the Pantanal of Brazil, but seemed a little more timid than all the tanagers and they would only approach the fruiting trees to grab a bite when other birds weren’t around. Check out the campo troupial’s song below:
I posted a similar photo a few years ago, but was recently going through my files and I was able to get a cleaner image of these three African elephants in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. The sun had been down for a while when I took this shot in the last possible light of the day. In the background you can see the euphorbia candelabrum trees that are typical of the Ugandan savannah.
This one really gives a sense of how tall these guys are (four feet from ground to shoulder), the tallest canine in the Americas. Although it looks more like a fox, it’s actually a wolf, photographed in a remote area of northeastern Brazil.
January is the month that elephant seal pups are being born up and down the California coast. This pup is probably only about a week old. The mom seems quite pleased with the new addition to her family.
This is an atmospheric phenomenon known as sundogs. It’s also known as a phantom sun or mock sun. The technical name is a parhelion, which means “beside the sun.” During very cold weather (like this zero degree day in Yellowstone) sundogs are formed by ice crystals called diamond dust which are drifting randomly in the air. The ice crystals act as prisms forming two rainbow colored bright spots of light (the sundogs) which anchor a halo around the sun.
This is kind of an unusual one for me but I thought it was interesting. Upper Newport Bay Wildlife Preserve and Ecological Reserve is in the middle of Orange County, southern California. It is a very large area of wilderness in the middle of one of the country’s most extreme examples of suburban sprawl. The area is essentially an estuary (where salt and fresh water mix) that cuts a path through the landscape forming a bit of a canyon. Bike trails, running paths and playing fields line the upper rim of this canyon, but none seem to lead down into it. In fact, it was quite deserted down there when I left the trails above and headed toward the water in search of wildlife. I saw lots of wading birds like egrets and ducks in the estuary, and then came across all these discarded balls. I assume they all got washed down into the canyon from up above, where all the neighborhood kids play, and came to rest in this spot.
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This was an all or nothing weekend for me down in Florida. I was in search of the elusive Florida Panther, one of the rarest creatures on the planet, and I spent all my time trying to find one. As you can see from the above photo, I was not successful. Instead, you’ll have to settle for this Florida box turtle. Not quite as elusive. Not quite as spectacular. But a much more patient and accommodating subject. I took this photo in the Big Cypress National Preserve in the southwest corner of the state, where both the turtle and the panther live.
