Seems an awful lot of friends have been traveling to the Cinque Terre region of the Italian Riviera lately so I thought I’d post a shot. I was recently there for the third time when I got this early morning photo of Vernazza, my favorite of the five small fishing villages that make up the Cinque Terre.
I took this photograph of a cabbage white butterfly in Wellfleet, Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago, but it could have been anywhere, as they are the most common and widespread butterfly in the country. And they’re not even native, having been introduced from Europe in the 1860s.
They call this one the common brown lemur. In my estimation a rather pedestrian name for such a fine lemur. Of course, as with all lemurs, it’s from Madagascar.
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. 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.