Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
Here is a selection from some of the hundreds of photos I have taken over the past couple days at Zimanga Game Reserve with Wildlife ACT. I’ve seen quite a bit of Kalahari, the beautiful cheetah over the last couple days. He will definitely need a few posts dedicated just to him! But right now, I must dash as time to head out and find the wild dogs!
Since Monday I have been at Zimanga Private Game Reserve as a photographic volunteer with Wildlife ACT. The primary focus on this reserve is monitoring and tracking wild dog and cheetah. While the cheetah has remained elusive thus far, I have had the opportunity to spend some time with the pack of six wild dogs. I’m having a brilliant time. As it is very soon time for the afternoon monitoring session, this post will be brief; I wanted the chance though to share a few photos from the past days, as a hint of what is to come.
All summer I saw groups of tiny grey birds on the dikes near my work, but never had a camera with me to capture a photo so I could look up what they were. A few days ago, while working on the computer at home, I heard loads of chirping through the open window, and when I went outside, there was a group of the tiny grey birds in the bushes alongside my building. Luckily, I managed to grab my camera and capture a single decent photo, and figure out what I had been seeing were Bushtits. I had never seen them at home before, and who knows if I will ever see them flying around my neighbourhood again, but I certainly am happy to have a few months of wondering “what do I call these?” finally over.
I’m sure the purpose of the orange floating plastic is to prevent debris from entering the pumping station (which is to the left just out of the shot), but this time of year, the only purpose seems to be separating murky water from even murkier water. The herons seem to find it a great place to spend the mornings, as it has been a rare walk the few months when I haven’t seen a heron in or around this location.
I was lucky as I was able to get quite close to the heron to take the photo below. Spencer stayed calm and quiet and I think we got within about 15 feet before the heron started looking a bit uncomfortable, so we backed off to allow it to get back to searching for some breakfast.
A couple of weekends ago, I was out for my usual morning walk with Spencer when I finally had the chance to get some photos of the kingfisher that I have been seeing intermittently for the last year. The kingfisher was out along the river where I normally see the herons and ospreys, so I wasn’t able to get the crisp, clear shots I have been hoping for all this time. But, I had a great sighting, which is all that really matters to me!
While we were on our return along the dikes, the kingfisher was flying from one wooden post to the next, in the same direction we were headed. I tried a few shots each time she stopped at a different location, but the distance was the always just about the same, so there wasn’t much difference in the shots. Right near the end of the dike, I stopped to take one more shot, and managed to catch a sequence of the kingfisher diving, catching a small fish, dropping it, and then flying away.
Today was a great day for bird watching out along the dikes while on my morning walk. I arrived a bit later than usual and ended up heading in a different direction to avoid following another walker with dogs that had arrived just before me (Spencer would not have been pleased with that scenario). The change in scenery worked out well though, as I saw heron, an eagle, a northern flicker and I was lucky enough to see a cooper’s hawk for the first time in many months. I managed a few shots while it hunted along the grassy edge of the river.
For some reason, seeing this heron perched on one leg reminded me of tree pose in yoga class.
Just now while doing some work on the computer, I heard quite a bit of peeping from my open window. I’m used to having a robin in my little yard quite often, but today, she was here with her two chicks. I didn’t want to scare them away, so I wasn’t able to get Mom in the shot with the two youngsters; I was just glad I was able to get outside to take a few shots as through the window screen was not yielding great results!
All photos at 1/800sec, f5.6, ISO6400
A few weeks ago, I came across a heron perched on a water level post along the dikes, and while I was able to create an interesting silhouette from the photograph I took, it wasn’t at all how I had envisioned what the final image would look like. Since I had never seen a heron on that post before, I didn’t think it likely I would get the chance to try again for the shot I wanted, but it came only a week later. This time, I was able to approach slowly enough to shoot from a few different angles, and get some crisp shots of the heron.
Here are a few osprey photos from the past two weeks that I liked, but have only just had the chance to work on. They don’t really go together as a grouping, but I wanted to get them posted, as I am hoping to have some good sightings on the upcoming weekend 🙂
