Not necessarily a great photo technically, but as you can see I was able to capture a roseate spoonbill as he presides over a meeting with representatives of each of the local wading bird species, including white ibis and tri-colored heron, to discuss matters of mutual interest. Â This was in Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island in Florida.
Alpine ibex are a form of wild goat that live in the Alps. This one is a male, photographed in a captive situation on my recent trip to Italy. Both males and females have horns, but the males are substantially longer, growing more than 3 feet in length. The horns are mainly used for defense against predators like wolves, lynxes, bears and foxes.
Next time you think that humans don’t age gracefully, just be glad you’re not a bearded pig. I’ve posted a few of the young ones in the past, and they’re actually quite good looking. As for the adults… well, you’re looking at one. These guys would follow around the orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo, cleaning up food scraps as they went along.
After several days of failing to get any decent views of chimpanzees, we finally came across a tree in a clearing by a river that had about 8 of them getting ready for nightfall. This mother and baby were pretty high up in the tree. I used my longest lens and cropped in quite a bit.
A couple of elephant seals attempting to make a couple of more elephant seals. This one was taken on a deserted stretch of beach near San Simeon, California.
I photographed this northern flicker at Sylvan Lake State Park in Colorado. It’s the only woodpecker that commonly feeds on the ground. It also has the odd distinction of having over 100 common names, including yellowhammer, clape, gaffer woodpecker, harry-wicket, heigh-ho, wake-up, walk-up, wick-up, yarrup, and gawker bird. Most of the names are attempts at imitating its calls.
The bighorn sheep I saw up at Mount Evans in Colorado over the 4th of July weekend were looking a bit on the haggard side. Well, maybe more than a bit. As you can see, this ewe that I photographed along the side of the road wasn’t exactly sporting a camera ready fur coat. But then again, the patchy look kind of adds character.
Here’s another request, this time from my young friend David Koffler. In the spring, female snapping turtles will travel on land for great distances to find suitable sandy soil to lay their eggs. I came across this one as she crossed a freshly sprouting field of crops near Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.
I had a request for another spectral tarsier, so here it is. It was actually quite dark when I took this one (tarsiers are nocturnal), but I used a tripod and a long exposure to take advantage of what little light there was (mostly from the full moon). Like the black-crested macaque from yesterday, these guys live in Tangkoko National Park in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Not much to say here, just a simple portrait of a rather suave looking black-crested macaque.