As my final post for the next two weeks I figured I might as well go with a big ticket item. These male polar bears are trying to prove dominance by who has the bigger mouth. As for my next two weeks, I’ll be in Kenya and hope to return with many more big ticket items. Stay tuned.
The last time I was visited Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado I took a bunch of panorama shots (usually five or so frames across that I later stitched together in Photoshop). They look great big with tons of detail, although quite small and underwhelming in the format of this blog. I never posted any because of that. But if you click on this image, the full size photo will load (you might have to click it again after it loads to go full size). If you’ve never been to Great Sand Dunes, it’s a great place. One of my favorite national parks, and also one of the newest, having only recently been upgraded from a national monument to a national park.
Again, I offer up one of nature’s truly handsome creatures — this time a little more of a close up so you can really appreciate that face. The male proboscis monkey is also known as the Dutch monkey, or simply Dutchman, as the native Borneans felt that with the large nose and belly, the monkeys looked an awful lot like the Dutch colonizers.
This belted kingfisher gives a much different look when its wings are up than when down. The photographs were taken in the Pantanal of Brazil last September.
I photographed this young black tailed deer a while back in one of my favorite locations, Olympic National Park in Washington state. The little guy was eating grass along the side of the road with his/her mother and took a quick break to see what I was up to.
My sister Mo requested a tarsier this week, so I figured I’d go one better and post a baby tarsier. This little thing couldn’t have been much bigger than a softball. For the most part it had been clinging to, and hiding behind its mother, but at one point it jumped over to another branch and I was able to get a few shots in the clear. For those not paying attention to the last tarsier post, these guys are one of the smallest primates in the world, and this particular species of tarsier — the spectral tarsier — lives only on a couple of Indonesian islands. I photographed this guy in Tangkoko National Park on the island of Sulawesi.
I’ve posted quite a few photos of elephant seals before but I keep finding new ones that I like. This mother was protecting her newborn pup from other agitated seals that were sharing space on the beach (and perhaps from the close approach of a photographer — the only one on the deserted beach last winter near the small town of San Simeon, California).
This mother moose and her son seem to be having a bit of a conversation as they walk through the snow. I was driving through Silver Gate, Montana when I spotted them through a stand of evergreens on the side of the road.
The return of everybody’s favorite giant rodents. These guys are very common along riverbanks throughout South America. In this case, I was in the Pantanal of Brazil. Typically capybaras weigh roughly 160 pounds, but there have been a few recorded cases of individuals hitting the scales in excess of 230 pounds.
While I was sitting inside a makeshift blind waiting for honey badgers to arrive, several birds stopped by, allowing me very tight portraits. This one is a southern yellow hornbill. I previously posted a shot of this guy looking directly at camera. Here’s one that gives a good look at the beak and facial feathers.