During a morning game drive on photo safari in Tarangire National Park, we watched a troop of baboons eating and grooming. Baboons can be interesting animals to watch because of their group interactions. This young one grabbed this insect off the ground and scrambled up this tree so he could eat it without being disturbed. He seems to be winking at me right as I snapped the shutter.
One of my favorite drives in one of my favorite places for a photo safari is along the edge of the Silale Plains in Tarangire National Park. On this day, we had great clouds and I liked the look of these acacia trees placed in the foreground.
Because I can’t resist a cheesy TGIF photo, here’s a yawning bush hyrax. We were looking for leopards in trees as we drove around the Tarangire River on a recent photo safari. As we looked up into the canopy, there was this little guy staring at us from 6 feet away. He was (obviously) unimpressed by us.
We came across this cheetah mother and cub in the short-grass plains of Ndutu on one of my photo safaris. In this photo, she patiently scanned the horizon for game to feed this and three other cubs and that patience paid off. We watched her hunt from the beginning, when she stalked a herd of gazelle, to the end when she walked out of the dust cloud that her running she had created. She carried one back to her cubs in her mouth and we stayed with them while the sun set and they fed – about another hour or so. One of the most magical moments I’ve had on my many safaris.
We came across this elephant on my photo safari last October in Tarangire National Park. While the elephants in the northern part of the park are more accustomed to safari vehicles, we took a long drive that day to the southern areas near the Gursi Swamp where the elephants are more skittish. This one turned from browsing this tree and I waited for him to flare his ears at me before I snapped the shutter.
I intentionally left the elephant smaller in the frame so that the photograph shows the surrounding environment and I love the look that my infrared camera gives to the trees and sky.
Something colorful for a gray day here in New England. I took this photograph of a Lilac-Breasted Roller in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania on my March 2012 safari. He very generously turned his head to the side which gave me the catch-light highlight in his eye which always adds life to a wildlife photograph.
One morning in the Ngorongoro Crater, we had an amazing sighting of lion cubs near tall grass. This one cooperated long enough to pose for a portrait.
Last December 3rd, I was the guest speaker at the Huntington Camera Club’s meeting. Afterward, Darin Reed of the club interviewed me for their January newsletter and kindly granted me permission to reproduce the interview here:
People frequently think that Africa is a swelteringly hot place. It is after all at the equator. While it’s true that the midday sun can be quite hot, people are surprised when I tell them to pack a warm jacket for the mornings. This morning’s sunrise over the Serengeti was made dramatic by a thick layer of fog covering the ground and it was very chilly. As we drove up to the Maasai Kopjes for a change of scenery, it was a great time to photograph landscapes showing the trees and the fog to the horizon.
Once we arrived at the Maasai Kopjes, we found one of the highlights of the trip for me. We came across a serval in the tall grass. They are shy cats and I’ve never had the treat of seeing one before. It only stuck around for half a minute and, luckily, I was able to fire off a few frames before it walked away into the grass where we could no longer see it.
Later, our final evening game drive was mellow. We saw rhino from a distance and tried to track them as close as we could but rhino movements are unpredictable and they never came close enough to photograph.
–Dave
Today was another day of cats. We awoke to another gorgeous sunrise across the Serengeti plains. We started with two lions in a tree, watching nearby zebra (we heard later they came down and chased the herd but came up short). We then came upon four lions who were resting after killing a buffalo by the river. Later that day, we finally saw a cheetah resting under a tree with a freshly killed Thomson’s Gazelle. We stayed with her for an hour and a half, hoping for great photos of the inevitable confrontation when other predators try to take her kill but, after sunset, we had to depart for our camp. When we drove by the same site the next morning, there was no sign the gazelle was ever there.
–Dave