I don’t usually post shots that were taken in zoos or aquariums, but the jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California are so spectacular that I had to share. Each tank in the jellies exhibit is a work of art in itself and lit to illuminate the translucent beauty of the animal. The jellyfish in this photo are called sea nettles. They live off the California coast and they do sting, but aren’t venomous enough to cause death in a human.
I had seen photos of these calla lilies before but had never been able to find their exact location. Last weekend I was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway south of Carmel, California when I had to turn around due to road closures from landslides. That’s when I stumbled upon this spot in Garrapata State Park on the northern edge of Big Sur. It pretty much rained all weekend but I was able to get the camera out during a few quick dry spells in between the downpours. The lilies grow along a small river that empties into the Pacific.
There were three baby gorillas in the troop of twenty three that we saw in the Ugandan jungle. The two other babies were running around, swinging from vines and playing when this one settled into its mother’s arms to take a nap.
About a 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles lies the Carrizo Plain. It’s a large enclosed flatland that extends for about 50 miles in one direction and 15 in the other. This is one of the best places in California to view the San Andreas Fault. I had been there a few times before photographing pronghorn and other species of California’s dry grasslands. On my most recent visit, I didn’t see any wildlife, but the landscape itself was worth a few a shots as the sun set behind the Caliente Mountain Range.
Indonesia is famous for its hornbills but halfway through my trip I still hadn’t seen any. This was one of the first I was able to capture, silhouetted against the rising sun in Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantam, Borneo..
As soon as I got down on the ground, this bobcat became very comfortable with my presence. In fact, it started walking toward me, keeping a watchful eye, but not too concerned. In this photo, it was about 10 to 15 feet away as it slowly walked right on by, on its way to find some breakfast.
I’m out in LA and then Orlando, Dallas and Atlanta for a couple of weeks for work but I wanted to keep the photo of the day blog going so I loaded up two weeks of photos before I left for the airport. That being said, there are a bunch of repeat species. Not repeat photos, but animals that I may have sent before. Like this white squirrel here only in this shot he/she has a nut in his/her mouth which I kind of liked, and it makes the photo different enough from the last time I sent one of these semi albino grey squirrels from Olney, Illinois.
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.
Here’s another from my day at the elephant seal nursery. It seemed as if every adult female was alongside a newborn pup.
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.