Wildlife Photography Blog

Caption: White spring blossoms, Currys Post, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

The official first day of Spring for countries in the Southern Hemisphere (corresponding to the first official day of Fall or Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere) is around September 20/21, depending on when the sun crosses the equator.

However, in South Africa where I live, and also in Australia and New Zealand, September 1st is recognized as the first day of Spring. The plum and peach trees agree, as evidenced by the beautiful blossoms that have spectacularly erupted in the past few days close to my new home in the country.

Okay, so pretty blossoms may not fall into recognized wildlife categories, but I couldn’t resist acknowledging and paying homage to Spring, particularly after a long and colder than usual winter.

Caption: Male Malachite Sunbird (Nectarinia famosa) in non-breeding colors perching on Aloe flower, Currys Post, KZN Midlands, South Africa

Camera: Canon EOS 50D; Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM; Focal Length: 400mm; Shutter speed: 1/320; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 400.

The male malachite sunbird is usually depicted in its unmistakable breeding plumage — overall bright, metallic green colors with bright yellow pectoral tufts.

I’ve been watching a pair of malachite sunbirds flitting around the aloes flowering in my neighbors’ garden. Up to now the male remains in “eclipse” plumage — that comparatively dull, seasonal stage found in birds that do exhibit a distinct breeding plumage.

I’m hoping that before too long it’ll appear in its full, bright green finery while the aloes are still flowering so that I can get some shots of it with red or orange aloe blooms as a backdrop (right).

While waiting with camera on tripod for the sunbirds to co-operate, I took some shots of this strelitzia flower (below) as one seldom finds such near-perfect specimens of strelitzias (also known as crane flower or bird of paradise flower).

Caption: Close-up of male elephant’s tusk, Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia

Camera: Canon EOS 50D; Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM; Focal Length: 400mm; Shutter speed: 1/320; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 400.

Dale Peterson, in the excellent book Elephant Reflections that he co-authored with photographer Karl Ammann, says this of elephant tusks:

“Tusks are teeth, incisors that have grown over time and under evolutionary pressure taken on a projective profile. Like an ordinay tooth, a tusk’s hard outer husk protects an inner cavity of soft pulp and nerves, making it sensitive to pressure and, in case of injury, to pain. Instead of having roots, these specialized incisors are embedded for about a third of their length within a cranial socket.

“African savanna males will have tusks seven times heavier, on average, than those of the average female of the species: 49 kg (108 lbs) for the former, around 7 kg (15 lbs) for the latter.

“Not merely vital weapons, tusks are also highly functional tools: good for digging up underground water, minerals, and edible tubers. They serve as chisels to pry bark away from a tree, and as crowbars or levers to snap off branches or otherwise manipulate bulky or big objects.

“They are good things to rest a heavy trunk on (below), and, being electrical nonconductors, they’re useful as well for breaking down or through electric fences.

“Just as humans commonly prefer one hand over the other, so most elephants favor one tusk over the other, and typically these appendages will develop a consequental symmetry.”

Caption: Elephant bull resting his trunk on a tusk, Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia

See our previous post, In the Wake of Elephant Poachers, to see the sickening aftermath of a poaching sortie in the Lower Zambezi National Park, where the above photos were also taken.

Caption: Elephant’s trunk, hacked off by poachers, lying on the ground near the body of a dead elephant, Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia.

In mid-July, during a brief visit to Mwambashi River Lodge in the Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia, I went for a morning drive with safari guide Roddy Smith. This was not a game drive as such, but rather a recce to check roads in the park.

We hadn’t gone far when Roddy spotted vulture activity, which drew us to a sickening sight — two dead elephants, shot by poachers. The massive bodies lay close together, the tusks hacked out and the hides already streaked with vulture droppings.

Near one of the elephants lay its trunk, presumably chopped off during removal of the tusks. I’ve written an account of this incident and included photographs of the bodies. This is not pleasant viewing, but I’ve published the images to make people more aware of how most of the world’s ivory is sourced and to discourage people, who might not know better, NOT to buy ivory products. See Elephant Poaching – the Shocking Aftermath.

Below are more cheerful pictures, illustrating elephant trunks in action, together with an extract from the article, African Elephant ~ Loxodonta Africana.

“The trunk of an elephant is the most extraordinary and dexterous nose in creation. At once both gentle and strong, a trunk is capable of killing a lion — or caressing a frightened elephant calf. It can pick leaves, pull bark off trees, and pick up objects as small as a coin. It can suck up a gallon of water to squirt into a mouth or on a hot back (Elephants do not drink through their trunk, but use it to draw the liquid).

With their trunks elephants throw dust in the air, rub their eyes, greet one another, sound calls, test uncertain ground, smell danger — or a potential mate — and snorkel.”

Caption: Great Egret (Egretta alba) flying low over the water, Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia.

Camera: Canon EOS 50D; Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM; Focal Length: 400mm; Shutter speed: 1/500; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 400.

Formerly known in southern Africa as the Great White Egret, this large heron is found across most of the world’s tropical and warm temperate regions, including parts of North America, southern Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Other names by which this bird is known include White Egret, White Heron, American Egret, Large Egret, and Common Egret — all rather confusing, but probably a result of its distribution across so many different parts of the world.

The above photograph was taken from a motor boat while exploring some of the Zambezi River’s many channels during a brief visit to Mwambashi River Lodge in the Lower Zambezi National Park. I took a Manfrotto tripod on board which was fitted with a poor man’s gimbal head, the Manfrotto 393 Heavy Duty Telephoto Lens Support (also called Bogen 3421).


The Manfrotto 393 (left) is around $180 from Amazon, compared to the $600-odd you’d pay for a Wimberley gimbal head. I guess if you can afford a $9,000 Canon or Nikon 600mm lens, then 600 bucks for a top-of-the-range gimbal head is well within budget, but regrettably I’m not in that league and my longest lens is a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L telephoto.

This lens is not image-stabilised, so it’s essential to use a support and, for my purposes, the Manfrotto 393 works just fine, with either a Canon EOS 50D or EOS 1D Mk II body. For a comprehensive review of this head, see Manfrotto 393 gimbal head by Richard Peters Photography.

Caption: Big male chacma baboon chases smaller male baboon in typical example of the frequent skirmishes, fights, and chases that occur within baboon troops, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.

Camera: Canon EOS 50D; Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM; Focal Length: 400mm; Shutter speed: 1/2000; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 400.

During a recent visit to Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, we parked for a couple of hours at one the many pans to watch the wildlife coming to the pan to drink.

This makes sense in Hwange, where game drives can be fairly barren of wildlife, whereas the waterholes and pans consistently reward those with patience.

On this occasion we saw a good variety of animals, including elephant, buffalo, giraffe, and zebra arriving at the pan to drink. During this activity, a troop of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) arrived, as thirsty as the rest. Soon they were crouching down to drink, both in groups and as individuals.

Then the fun started, as they began squabbling and skirmishing, with frequent baring of teeth and other displays of aggression, threat, and counterthreat.

As Peter Apps explains in his book Wild Ways, a dispute between two males often sets off a chain reaction of squabbles, chases and fights in the rest of the troop. To find out more about this behavior and see a series of pictures illustrating baboon aggression and fights, see Baboon Skirmishes and Chases.