It seemed about time for another orangutan mother and baby photo of the day. This mother was being extremely gentle with her newborn, carefully cradling the baby’s head as she readjusted position. As with all my orangutan shots, this one was taken in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo.
I thought this golden-fronted woodpecker was a particularly handsome bird. In the US these guys live only in Texas, and a small portion of southern Oklahoma. I photographed this one in Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge near Rio Hondo, Texas. Other than that, there’s not much more to say about them so I’ll attempt to educate instead by tossing out the fact that a group of woodpeckers can be called a descent, a drumming or a gatling. Now go forth and use this knowledge as you see fit.
This was a pretty good fight for a while. At one point the lizard even made a nice move and had the snake in its grip. Eventually, however, the snake was too much for the lizard to handle. After about a ten minute struggle, the snake swallowed the lizard whole in a couple of seconds. This was taken in Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula in southwest Costa Rica.
Every night when I get on my computer to post an image I think to myself, why not a duck today. But then I send a monkey, or a bear or a frog. Ducks just don’t seem that exciting when compared to their fellow creatures. Today, however, I’m going to stick to my guns and give ducks their due. These two are northern pintails and they were photographed at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico last year. For a little more excitement, check out the sound file of their call.
I was in a canoe, first thing in the morning in the Pantanal of Brazil when I saw this black howler monkey just waking up. Anyone who has been to an area inhabited by howler monkeys has probably heard their unmistakeable call — the alarm clock of the rain forest — which can sometimes sound like a jet taking off. The attached sound file is a bit mellower than some I’ve heard, but gives an idea of what they sound like.
Feral hogs live throughout Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Texas. These are wild, not domesticated, swine but they aren’t indigenous to the Americas. It’s believed that they were brought over from Europe sometime in the mid 15th century. In Texas and other parts of the southwest, they compete with native peccaries for habitat. This attractive young lady was with a group of about twelve, including a few of her little piglets.
After selecting this image for today’s photo of the day, I realized that an awful lot of my recent postings feature an animal staring directly at the camera. Because of this I was going to try and find something else, but then I remembered the particular challenge of photographing eastern grey bamboo lemurs in the wild. It wasn’t easy. These guys are quick. I remember running through the forest with my guide as the eastern greys kept darting from one tree to another. Finally I got this guy to stay still for a second and I was able to get a quick shot. As with all lemurs, the eastern grey bamboo lemurs are prosimians, meaning literally pre-monkeys. Also including tarsiers and bushbabies, prosimians are primates that pre-date the monkeys and apes that flourished in the rest of the world — in the case of lemurs, away from the geographic isolation of Madagascar.
This little guy is a mouse opossum I came across one night in the Pampas region of Bolivia. As the name implies, they aren’t much bigger than a mouse, but they are marsupials and not rodents. There are 55 different species of mouse opossum living in Central and South America and they are all nocturnal.
