This is a red fronted brown lemur, photographed in central Madagascar. All lemurs are prosimians, meaning pre monkeys, and as the name would suggest, they predate monkeys and apes. There are nearly a hundred different species of lemur, and they all live in Madagascar. On my trip, I was lucky enough to see and photograph 23 of those species.
I spotted this mustang and her young foal in Monument Valley last year. Also known as wild horses, or feral horses, mustangs in the American west are descendants of horses brought over from Spain by early explorers. Most were brought to either Mexico or Florida. Eventually a few escaped or were stolen by native Americans and they rapidly spread throughout the west.
This crab eating fox appeared to be batting her eyes at me in an attempt to get some of my dinner. Every night, she and her mate would stop by the lodge I was staying at in the Pantanal of Brazil looking for scraps.
I had a request on Friday for “less reptiles and more cute fuzzy animals.” Baby orangutans are always a good bet in such a situation. Like any kid, this young guy was a bit of a mess. Photo taken at Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo.
Continuing with the eye theme to round out the week, this is a green parrot snake that appears to have lost an eye. All three photos are of the same snake. The top photo shows the snake’s injured right eye — a solid black color. In the second photo you see the right eye, the normal yellow color. The third photo shows both eyes. Messed up eye or not, the green parrot snake is most certainly one of the finest looking serpents around — not to mention harmlessly non-venomous.
Seems to be the week of the eye. This one belongs to a Parson’s chameleon. Chameleons are pretty amazing creatures — they can look in different directions at the same time, they have a tongue that shoots out of their mouths at lighting speed to catch prey, they can change colors, etc. What they’re not good at, however, is making a quick getaway, so once found, they’re easy to photograph. For this shot, taken in central Madagascar, I was only about a foot away.
Although these eyelashes may look long, they’re actually quite short for an African elephant. Sometimes you see elephants with four inch long lashes. They act as sunshades to block out the harsh light, and also dust, of the African savannah. This one was photographed in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.
In honor of my mother’s birthday today, I figured I’d post a crane of another sort. This sandhill crane is from Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Every fall, thousands of these cranes, as well as snow geese, flock to the open fields and shallow lakes in the area.
This was another of the sea otters that I recently photographed at Elkhorn Slough in California. As I mentioned before, it’s rare to get them on land like this. I kind of liked the sequence here, as the otter appears to be pretty happy about something.
