This here is a black-tailed jackrabbit, also known as a desert hare. Something about these guys fascinates me. Maybe it’s just those ears. Or the fact that they’re the inspiration for the jackalope myth that more than one person I know believes in. Seeing them leap through the desert in Anza-Borrego State Park in California they do, in fact, seem a bit antelope like. More photos to come in an upcoming post.
The coloring of panther chameleons varies from region to region in Madagascar. Unlike the males, that come in every color from red and green, to blue, the females are usually brownish in appearance. Or, like this one, a nice orange color.
Another from Venice Rookery in Florida. Egrets, herons, ibis and anhingas (like this one here) build nests on a small island in the middle of a small lake.
This one is from Mount Evans in Colorado, a quick drive from Denver. A herd of mountain goats were below the lip of the ridge and I would have driven right past without noticing if I hadn’t seen this guy poking his head above the rocks.
This is a black skimmer that I photographed on Merritt Island in Florida. When feeding, they fly just above the water, using their lower beak to skim the surface for food.
I spent a couple of hours with the black-crested macaques as they moved through the forest. The little ones, like this guy, were curious at first, but before long forgot I was there.
This is an agouti photographed in Costa Rica. Not quite squirrel, not quite rat — a little of both but quite a bit larger.
I’ve watched great blue herons nesting before in Venice, Florida, but never saw them grabbing branches as big as the ones they were on this particular day.
Here’s another one inspired by the Discovery Channel’s “Life” series. In the episode “Challenges of Life,” they highlight the strawberry poison dart frog and the Herculean effort the mother goes through to ensure that her young survive. She carries each of her tadpoles on her back, one by one, from the rainforest floor to the tops of trees — big, jungle trees — in search of suitable nurseries (in small pools of water that form in bromeliad leaves). Each tadpole needs its own nursery so that they don’t eat each other. Then the mother goes from nursery to nursery dropping unfertilized eggs into the water for the tadpoles to eat (apparently it’s good eatin’ for a young tadpole and they need more than just one, so the mother must continually return to each tree and nursery to drop another, and then another). She pretty much is traveling constantly while the tadpoles are growing. The first time I was in Costa Rica I saw this happening with a tadpole on the mother’s back but wasn’t able to get any good shots. Here’s a strawberry poison dart frog from my second trip to Costa Rica. There are many different varieties and colorations of this frog — this one being the appropriately named “blue jeans” morph.
Black oystercatchers are a large shorebird and one of my favorites in North American. Not really sure why, but I really like their entirely black feathers, orangish-red beaks, yellow, orange-ringed eyes, and pinkish legs. Nothing flashy, just a good solid, unpretentious bird. I was on a cliff, looking down on this one near San Simeon, California. They nest just above the high tide line of rocky shorelines and prey upon many small invertebrates including mussels, crabs and barnacles. Oddly enough, however, they don’t eat oysters.