First of all, sorry about the flurry of broken link posts that were sent out yesterday at about 6PM. I was updating my site and messing with a few things and, well, you saw what happened. From now on, I’m going to deactivate my subscribers list when I’m doing maintenance. Please don’t unsubscribe. I promise, it won’t happen again… I think.
As for the post — just a few kids playing down by the river with an elephant. Apparently, that’s okay in Sumatra. Actually, the kids are children of the elephant handlers and to them, the elephants are pets that they grow up with.
When the sun is low in the sky and there’s plenty of forest reflecting off the surface of the water, you can really get some interesting colors. This spectacled caiman was photographed late in the day on Lake Chalalan in Madidi National Park in Bolivia. Spectacled caiman can live in either salt or fresh water and because of their adaptability, are the most common of all the crocodilian species.
Another photo of the wild burros that I stumbled across in Moreno Valley, California. These two kept chasing each other back and forth, enabling me to get some nice slow shutter speed, motion blurred shots.
This night monkey seems to be enjoying his mango. Night monkeys are the only truly nocturnal monkey. I photographed this one in the Pampas region of Bolivia one night after dinner. The interesting thing about these guys is that they are susceptible to the same strain of malaria that humans are and are therefore used in medical research.
This used to be called a rufous-sided towhee, although the powers that be have decided that the western and eastern variants in the US are separate species. So to be hip, we’ll call it its new name, the spotted towhee (the eastern guys are appropriately called eastern towhees). Regardless of the name, both suffer from the cruel injustice of the female cowbird. Seems the cowbird sneaks into the towhee’s nest when an expectant mother isn’t there, removes the towhee eggs and then deposits a few of her own. The cowbird splits the scene before the towhee knows what’s going on. Unable to distinguish that a switch has occurred, the towhee will incubate the eggs as if her own.
We stumbled upon this landscape while driving from Montalcino to Montepulciano in southern Tuscany. In several of the Tuscan hill towns, we had seen postcards depicting this exact view. I would have liked to have photographed it either earlier or later in the day when the light was more dramatic, but those low clouds provided an interesting sky and just enough cover to diffuse the sun a bit.
Before I get to this good looking red frog, you might have noticed that the blog looks different today. I’ve been trying all sorts of things over the weekend to integrate it into a regular website. Everything is still in the works and unfortunately, in the process, I lost my subscribers list. I added back all those that I was able to save but if you didn’t get an email, please re-subscribe at the bottom of the page.
As for the frog, I posted a similar shot a couple of years ago. This is a tomato frog from Madagascar. This one is the female. She is much larger and more colorful than the brownish male.
I’ve always been a big fan of hippos and when I went to Uganda I wanted to get an eye level shot of one with its mouth open. What I didn’t want was for the mouth to be open on account of me. Hippos kill more people per year in Africa than any other mammal and approaching too closely can be a big mistake. They are herbivores, but get annoyed easily and are very quick in the water. They do most of their damage to people in small boats who get too close, but they can also charge in an instant on land. This guy was agitated when I approached water’s edge with my guide and he went through a serious of mock charges. I took a few quick shots before getting the message and quickly ran back up the riverbank.
Ever since my first trip to Tanzania I’ve been a fan of the warthog. Ugly little bastards but I like them. This guy was racing alongside our vehicle allowing me to get some nice blurred action shots.
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