Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I saw this beautiful firefinch couple at the Zimanga bird hide during our morning session. They are similar in size to the blue waxbills, and like them have such soft, gentle looking faces. As with (almost) all birds, the male has much more vibrant colouring than the female. And check out the tiny white dots running along the sides of their chests; such a delicate detail.
I spent a lot of time watching these little birds on my last trip to South Africa, both around the yard at the volunteer house, and while at the bird hides. There was something about the way they gathered in small groups, their flight style and their happy looking faces that reminded me of the oregon dark eyed juncos we have here at home; it certainly wasn’t based on appearance, as other than size and beak shape, they physically have nothing in common.
There have been an awful lot of things going on that have severely limited the free time I have had recently, which is why there hasn’t been a post from me in ages. Thankfully a lot of the items on my must get done list are now finished, and I can get back to working on my photography. With the lovely weather we have been having, it seems a shame that I’ve been stuck indoors, but there will be lots of time (and hopefully lots of good weather) for photos in the coming days and weeks.
I wanted something that would be fairly efficient to work on, so I decided to go through the photos I took of oxpeckers at the bird hide. I had posted one photo previously https://wordpress.com/post/51960952/1129/ but had a few others that I thought were worth posting.
Wishing everyone an excellent day!
This crested barbet stopped by the watering hole while I was at the Mkombe bird hide at Zimanga Game Reserve. For reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, it reminds me of the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn from the Looney Tunes cartoons I watched when I was a kid.
Have great evening everyone!
We left so early for our walk today I didn’t bother grabbing my camera, and as we were leaving the dike I was kicking myself for it. This would have been so much better shot with something other than my phone. I’ve never before seen a heron perched on the top of the power lines.
I’m both happy and irritated with myself at the moment. Happy that I discovered a few additional sunbird photos that had not been properly tagged, and annoyed with myself for not going through the proper workflow to begin with.
That off my chest, here are a few additional sunbirds I saw during my last trip to South Africa. Enjoy!
While organizing photos, I came across a few lilac-breasted roller shots that frankly, I forgot I had. They are from my trip this past October / November to Zimanga. While there, I didn’t have a lot of success capturing the roller, as most of the time we were driving when I noticed it, and it was gone by the time we stopped, if we were able to stop at all. If there is a more beautiful bird though, I’ve not seen it yet. When the sunlight strikes its feather, the colours are just amazing.
Enjoy the photos and have a lovely day.
You can see some of my roller shots from my first trip to South Africa here: Lilac Breasted Roller, The lilac breasted roller.
I saw several bee-eater species on my first trip to Africa, which have been featured on several previous blog posts: Carmine bee-eaters, Bee-eaters, Birds in flight
This past trip, I added the little bee-eater to my list of birds, and saw the white fronted and european bee-eater again. I’ve only ever seen the european bee-eater from far distances, so I am hoping some day I will have some nice close up shots to work with.
More pictures from my session at the Mkombe hide at Zimanga. The mousebirds were a favourite of the photo coordinator, and the bird she most hoped seeing when we started our hide session. The red faced mousebird only made brief appearance, but a good number of speckled mousebirds spent a great deal of time at the water.
Looking at the photos now, I find a resemblance between the mousebird and a cardinal (head and beak shape) though I must be honest I have not seen a cardinal other than in photos for over 30 years, so I could be completely wrong about that.
Wikipedia provides some information on the behaviour and habitat of the mousebird:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousebird
Have a great day!
