Wildlife - Summer, Autumn 2008

[Maggi Young]

TeeHee... it's still in my quote box, though!!

[Lesley Cox]

 The book that I use notes that 'ageing female specimens' frequently have a median red streak down the abdomen.

Peter

In my experience aging females usually have moles, stretch marks and a red patch where they scratched the itchy spot created by the labels on their knickers.

[Paul T]

Too much information Lesley!! 

[galahad]

Note to self: read all previous postings first

[Lesley Cox]

It certainly helps Ross.

[Maggi Young]

Note to self: read all previous postings first

Ross, your note has just given Ian and I a reallly good laugh............one of the pleasures of this Forum is the comments coming whizzing out of left field  which can lead to much giggling and even chortling... all of which is terribly good for us! 
Laughter apart, though, your "note to self" is a sensible one.... I have got myself well and truly confused sometimes ..... and that's just when reading about the plants! 

[fermi de Sousa]

Getting back to the wildlife (apart from Peter at the discussion weekend),
here is one of our local nocturnal birds who was sitting on a rock in our neighbour's front garden!

It's a tawny frogmouth, Podargus strigoides

looking a bit bedraggled because of the rain,

but quite content to sit there all day,

when on a tree branch it is almost indistinguishable from the tree!
cheers
fermi

[Paul T]

Fermi,

VERY cool to see a Tawny Frogmouth like that.  Does stand out a bit more when on a rock though, doesn't it.  Didn't stop it trying to blend in and act like a branch though.    I wonder why it chose to sit so low down.  I hope it is OK.  I love the fact that it is keeping it's eyes a crack open to keep an eye on you, but slitting them to make it look like it doesn't have eyes in the first place and is "just another branch on this.... er.... rock?".

[Lesley Cox]

here is one of our local nocturnal birds who was sitting on a rock in our neighbour's front garden!
fermi

I'm surprised you can't tell the difference between a bird and a frog Fermi.

[Lesley Cox]

Scrub that. Before I enlarged the pics I really thought they WERE of a frog.  So NOW who can't tell the difference.

[Paul T]

Lesley,

Made even more amusing by the fact they're known as Tawny Frogmouth's.  At least you obviously aren't alone in the frog link!

[Lesley Cox]

It was when I enlarged and saw some feather's that I twigged. As Maggi says - there's often a clue.

[Peter Maguire]

I thought that is was about time I pushed my posts over 100 and acquired senior status, so I'll post some recent wildlife photos with you. I was fortunate to accompany my hard-working wife Anne on one of her working trips recently - to Tanzania. Much of the time the itinerary was dictated by her work commitments, but I did manage a one-day safari trip to Arusha National Park (in less than prefect weather, the rainy season was going on longer than expected) and also a fair bit of birdwatching around various places. I've tentatively identified most of the pictures, but feel free to correct me if I've mis-named anything.
I'll start with some of the larger specimens, all from Arusha National Park:
Giraffe (Maasai subspecies, possibly Gerry's relation?) - 3 of very many pictures
Common zebra with sacred ibis
African buffalo with yelow billed egret
Defassa waterbuck

[Peter Maguire]

Common warthog
Olive baboon
Kirk's dik-dik
Gueraza colobus x2
Ochre bush-squirrel

[Peter Maguire]

You'll notice the mammals are getting smaller, and that's all the mammal shots that I felt were worth showing. Arusha NP is not the place to go to see large predators, but with only a day to spare it was the only park that would be worth a one day vsit from where we were staying in Moshi, and I was more than happy with what I saw and experienced - the grin took several days to fade.
I took quite a number of bird photos, mainly to aid later identification, but such is the power of digital photography these days, that many of them were resasonable for web use, so here's a variety of the better ones:
Mountain wagtail (Moticilla clara) - Marangu, Kilimanjaro
Green Pigeon (Treron calva) - Moshi
Fiscal Shrike (Lanius collaris) - Arusha NP
Reichenow's Weaver (Ploceus baglafecht reichenowi) - Arusha NP
Black chested harrier eagle (circaetus pectoralis) with ?hyrax - Arusha NP