A couple of photos today of mute swans. These were taken last spring in Cape May, New Jersey. From the ibird app on my iphone, I offer this interesting, yet melancholic tidbit: “The phrase ‘swan song’ refers to this swan and to the legend that it is utterly silent until the last moment of its life, and then sings one achingly beautiful song just before dying.”
I had a few captions ready for this Brazilian guinea pig but then figured I’d just post it and let you think what you will. This one was captured in northeastern Brazil at a place called Hyacinth Valley.
Red colobus monkeys are one of eight different species of primate that we saw in Uganda. They are listed as critically endangered due to sensitivity to habitat loss. This one was spotted in Kibale National Park in the southwestern corner of the country.
I came upon this elephant seal first thing in the morning along the central California coast. It had been sleeping well back beyond the beach and the dunes. At night, they’ll often bed down quite a distance from the water. This one was a juvenile and no longer under the protection of its mother. It didn’t quite know what to think of me at first and just laid there staring at the camera. Then it decided to tell me that maybe I was just a little too close. Not wanting to disturb the seal anymore than I already had, I snapped off a final shot and headed down to the beach to check out the rest of the colony.
This coati was sniffing around in the fruit orchards at Tiskita Lodge in southwestern Costa Rica. With over a hundred different varieties of fruit that bloom throughout the year, the orchards are a magnet for the area wildlife. Those are starfruit hanging from the tree. The coati was feasting on the ones that had fallen on the ground. I also ate my fair share of starfruit, as well as many other kinds of fruit, on this trip.
Birds are always a little more amusing when they’re looking directly at you. This is a cattle egret and it was photographed in Uganda. Cattle egrets also occur in the United States and as the name indicates, they’re often found around cattle. Like other egrets and herons, they are primarily wading birds, but they make their way to pastures to pluck ticks and flies from cows and other mammals.
This is a red fronted brown lemur, photographed in central Madagascar. All lemurs are prosimians, meaning pre monkeys, and as the name would suggest, they predate monkeys and apes. There are nearly a hundred different species of lemur, and they all live in Madagascar. On my trip, I was lucky enough to see and photograph 23 of those species.
I spotted this mustang and her young foal in Monument Valley last year. Also known as wild horses, or feral horses, mustangs in the American west are descendants of horses brought over from Spain by early explorers. Most were brought to either Mexico or Florida. Eventually a few escaped or were stolen by native Americans and they rapidly spread throughout the west.
This crab eating fox appeared to be batting her eyes at me in an attempt to get some of my dinner. Every night, she and her mate would stop by the lodge I was staying at in the Pantanal of Brazil looking for scraps.
