Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I’ve been really enjoying working through bird images lately, so I have carried on with that today. These images are from both my 2022 and 2024 trips and the only thing that unites them is that they caught my eye when I wanted to work on some images. Perhaps that isn’t the best theme or reason, but I went with it anyways.
This week, I was fooled by an A.L.T (Animal Like Thing). It’s pretty common while out watching birds or wildlife. Those pesky distant bushes that look like an antelope, the upturned branch that looks exactly like a perched bird, the big rock that fooled you into thinking it was a rhino.
While I was out with my dogs earlier in the week, I stopped dead in my tracks, absolutely convinced there was an owl perched on a fallen tree in the back forest. I quickly took the dogs in and grabbed my camera and raced back outside, eagerly zoomed in and then saw – a broken branch sticking up from the dead tree. And here I was excitedly thinking I was finally seeing the great horned owl after hearing it call from the depths of my yard for years. I had a brief moment of disappointment and then headed back inside to tend to the pups.
There are a few fallen trees in the forest behind my home that I know look like animals, but this was one that hadn’t caught my eye before. Once all the snow is gone, I might need to go flag it with something so I don’t get fooled by that one again.
Since I am still without even seeing the great horned owl, let alone capturing an image of it, I instead have a photo of the barred owl in the yard. We’ve seen brief glimpses of an owl flying near the house recently, likely the barred as it seems quite comfortable hanging around near the house.
When I chose the ostrich images last week, I flagged quite a few other bird images to work through, and settled on a few water birds seen in Botswana on my most recent trip. All of these images were taken during the Okavango Delta portion of the trip.
I think this year finally needs to be the year that I get my act together and start my E-Bird list to track all the birds I’ve seen. Thankfully, my last two trips I’ve travelled with an incredibly organized, avid birder, so hopefully I can get some screenshots of her lists to get me started from the most recent trips. The rest will be scanning through my image catalogues; and to be honest, I can think of worse ways to pass the time. Who knows what images might jump out at me, wanting to be revisited.
While I have seen ostriches on several of my African trips, they aren’t the most common bird to come across, so they are always special to see. Until you are right alongside one, it is easy to misjudge just how enormous these birds are.
This past trip we had a couple encounters with ostriches; first a group of them at sunset, who were all moving like they had somewhere to be, and second a lone female and a lone male (though the lone male was too far away to bother trying to capture any pictures).
I decided to focus on birds this week, and looked for images where I had a pair of the same species together. I was surprised how many I found, and surprised by how many bird images I still have to go through from my last few trips.
While the wattled cranes are a fairly rare sighting and the pygmy geese were a first for me, the rest of the birds featured are fairly wide spread and easy to spot. I’d be pretty shocked for anyone to go on a southern African safari and not see a lilac breasted roller and at least one type of hornbill.
I was in awe of the lilac breasted roller at first sight, and they have remained my very favourite bird to spot on safari ever since. It would be a challenge to think of a time on a game drive when I saw one and didn’t mention it; not necessarily as a request to stop, but it is just such a striking bird that I can’t help but comment on it. Seeing them with a beautiful clear blue sky in the background is a bonus, but they are beautiful even in flat light.
Here are a couple of images of lilac breasted rollers from my most recent trip.
Last week I focused on land predators, and this week, it is a few predators of the air.
I find owls fascinating and love having the opportunity to see them (or hear them) at home or while away. I was fortunate to see several different species of owl during my trip to South Africa and Botswana, including one very, very rare owl that was likely my once in a lifetime viewing opportunity.
While I saw many Verreaux’s eagle owls on this trip, the sightings were either at night or early evening leaving me with less than inspiring images to share. But including them, we had 5 different owl species on the trip, which I think is fantastic.
I had a lot of bird images saved in my quick collection to edit, so I took the easy route, and worked on those today. Sometimes, the path of least resistant is the best way to go.
These images are both from my most recent travels and a trip to South Africa in 2019.
I felt like some colour on a dull day, so small birds with bright feathers it is. The lilac breasted roller remains one of my favourite birds to spot on safari, and I was quite excited on my past trip to have the chance to see other types of rollers as well. I didn’t get great photos of the other rollers, but included them anyways to show the variety of colours.
It was unfortunate to only see the purple roller and racket tailed roller high up against very bright skies, but at least I did get the racket tailed roller at the right angle to show off the interesting tail feathers.
These weaver images were taken in different areas; the southern masked weaver is wide spread and they create very interesting nests that often hang over water. The males are in charge of construction, and the females in charge of determining if the nest is up to standards or not. When you come across a large colony, you will often see nests that have been abandoned partway through construction.
