Such an elegant bird! The Painted Stork is a large wading bird that can be found around the Indian Subcontinent and Southern Asia.
Very colourful, these birds are not yet endangered, but are listed as a near threatened species partly due to habitat loss and destruction.
This Painted Stork was photographed in Ruhuna / Yala National Park, Sri Lanka.
The only species of Fox that calls Northern Ontario home is the Red Fox, but this fox doesn’t look very red does it?
Interestingly, there are two major colour morphs to the Red Fox – the Silver Fox and the Cross Fox. The latter of which accounts for 1/4 to 1/3 of the Red Fox population in Canada.
So…this is a Red Fox, but it is also a Cross Fox. Confused yet? You can tell this is a Red Fox because despite the black and morphed colouration it still has a white-tipped tail. The only other species of Fox in Ontario is the Grey Fox (in Southern Ontario), which has a black-tipped tail.
I can say it is definitely the ugliest fox I’ve ever seen. But this Cross Fox was a great hunter, I managed to follow it hunting for over an hour and saw it successfully catch one mouse-like critter, perhaps a vole. This Cross Fox was photographed near Esker Lakes Provincial Park in Ontario.
The most impressive predatory bird I saw in Africa, the Fish Eagle was spotted near water holes and perched high a top trees alongside rivers.
A powerful looking bird, you can tell by it’s claws that this bird means business! The African Fish Eagle also happens to have been chosen by Birdlife South Africa as the 2012 Bird of the Year.
This particular Fish Eagle photo was taken in Chobe National Park, Botswana.
Happy World Penguin Day!
April 25th is known as World Penguin Day, so for this #wildlifewednesday image I’ve chosen one of my favourite penguin pictures from my travels to Antarctica.
This little guy was photographed near the shore at Deception Island, a popular stop for visitors to the South Shetland Islands and Antarctic Peninsula. I found the Gentoo Penguins to be the most ‘friendly’ of the penguins in Antarctica. Chinstrap Penguins had a strangely evil look to them and I thought that Adelie Penguins had some sort of superiority complex about them.
Perhaps that sounds crazy, but if you spent much time with penguins you’d probably go slightly crazy too…!
Black howler monkeys are found in parts of Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. There are many Howler monkey species that range throughout Central and South America, but these are the ones usually found the furthest south.
As for their colour, only fully mature, adult males are black in colour. Younger Black howler monkeys, and females have a black and gold colour combination.
This howler monkey was photographed in the Pantanal region of Brazil.
