Friday, November 19, 2010

Black or White

Often people are classified as being either black or white, but in the animal world, being black or white is often an "exception to the rule" - as is the case with these 2 ostrich chicks = 1 black, the other white.





Similarly this Llama youngster is "unusually" black-coloured.







I "discovered" this little albino monkey in the vicinity of the Victoria Falls - and immediately "made" her the main character of my next book: Moni the Monkey

[My other "story with photos" is Impi the Impala - just check it out on: www.impi-impala.blogspot.com]


To my surprise I also recently detected an albino wildebeest (= a gnu) amongst a herd of Blue wildebeest in a Game reserve in Swaziland.





Another kind of exception to the rule is this springbok - it had accidentally slipped at a lime-rich waterhole & as a result, was covered in white mud!





In contrast this Black(!!) rhino had actually enjoyed a mud-bath at a waterhole in the Etosha Game Reserve (Namibia).





With its pink eyes this bunny also might be an albino!? . . .






. . . wheras this animal is neither white nor black - even if its legs are both black & white. It's generally known as a zonkey = a cross between a donkey & a zebra.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

At Close Quarters


After a very successful tour I've once again returned with some "distinctive" photos like this Vervet monkey - trying to hide or blend in with the environment?



On the subject of primates, which often reveal human-like mannerisms - ditto these Chacma baboons.






"Hold on tight!" seems to be the instruction to this baby baboon.






It's always a pleasure to see a family of graceful giraffes and fun to photograph if they represent such a "united front".




Tracking down all of the BIG 5 is no easy task when on a game drive, so the excitement when discovering one of the cat species, often "knows no bounds" - just ask the lady, who spotted this well-disguised leopard, how she reacted.



In contrast this otherwise habtually "shy" nyala male didn't seem to mind that we admired it - at such close quarters.


Talking about nyalas - to this day, after taking thousands of animal photos, I still haven't been able to "capture" a nyala male & female "side by side" - although both "feature" in this photo. I "long" to do that mainly because this is the only one of our antelopes, where there's a marked difference in size between the male & female, so that in Enlish we call a nyala male a bull (not a ram), but a female nyala a ewe (= more or less the size of an impala antelope).