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Category: photographs

African leopard, Indian leopard (teaser)

 

Pictured above is a leopard, stalking.

He had targeted a springbok, on the morning of 07 November 2022 in Etosha National Park, northern Namibia.

Almost exactly four months later, in very different habitat we enjoyed our first Indian sighting of a leopard.

The next two Pelican Yoga posts will feature each encounter, separately.

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Indian boar

 

 

All “true” wild boars – as distinct from domesticated pigs who have escaped and become “wild”/“feral” – hail from Eurasia or North Africa, the so-called “Old” World.

They are generally reckoned a single species, Sus scrofa.

Circa sixteen subspecies are recognised, and none are more striking than Sus scrofa cristatus, the Indian boar. (aka “Andamanese pig” or “Moupin pig”)

Its signature feature is a dorsal mane/crest that can be very spectacular, especially when it is a mature male’s, in erect mode.

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Warthogs and water

Every living thing needs water.

However, different living things’ particular ways of accessing/consuming/conserving/using water, are hugely variable.

So are the quantities they require, how often they need to drink – if they do need to drink  – and even the very nature of their relationship to water.

Certain terrestrial creatures absolutely relish water…and not just as something to drink or to swim in.

In this respect, warthogs are nigh-peerless.

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Warthogs (1 of 2: individual portraits)

 

 

Classical Greek statuary, 21st century Hollywood, “supermodels”, “influencers”,  Barbie and Ken, the work of profit-maximising cosmetic surgeons or “surgeons”, pedlars of “miracle” diets and so-called “beauticians”…

Is your idea of “beauty” the fruit of parameters set by one or more of the above?

If your answer is an unchangeable “yes”, you will never appreciate that warthogs are indeed beautiful…

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Fine swine…

…but too many humans revile and/or ridicule suids – the pig family.

Warthogs (pictured above, at a waterhole in Namibia) get a particularly “bad press”.

They are routinely described as “ugly”.

Allegedly, their faces are ones that only their mothers could love.

To the best of my knowledge, I bear little resemblance to a warthog, but I really like warthogs’ faces…and their whole-hog selves.

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Carnivore on forest floor (#3 in “Deep Creek” single image teaser series)

 

 

The old-growth forest’s floor in Deep Creek Conservation Park is almost certainly South Australia’s finest winter location for fungi-fanciers.

It is also spectacularly well-endowed with successful predators who lack legs and teeth.

They can photosynthesise…

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Mushy magic (#2 in “Deep Creek” single image teaser series)

 

 

The pictured mushroom (i.e. fungal “fruiting body”) has a cap so shiny that parts of it act like a “funhouse mirror”, yielding what look like distorted reflections of its forest home’s canopy.

To see them, you probably need a good quality screen – bigger than a phone’s…and/or you may need to zoom in on/enlarge the mushroom’s shiniest surfaces.

In any event, you should have no difficulty “discovering” an ant who made a fatal mistake.

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Stringybark forest (#1 in “Deep Creek” single-image teaser series)

 

 

Deep Creek Conservation Park is circa 110 kilometres south of Adelaide – 90 minutes driving time, almost all of it on good roads.

One of South Australia’s better kept “secrets” includes SA’s best remaining (tiny) remnant of a once relatively common but now very rare type of forest, spectacular coastline, lovely bushland, wildflowers, many birds, and lots of ‘roos,

And that’s not all…

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Parachilna sunset (final episode in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

South Australia’s longest chain of mountains is named after Matthew Flinders, not by him; “the navigator” did not impose his own name on any natural feature.

One of the Flinders’ gems is Parachilna Gorge, on the mountains’ western side.

Very soon after you drive back out of the gorge, you look across a seemingly-endless, flattish plain.

Sitting in it, nearby, is the almost-town of Parachilna; effectively, its excellent pub is the town.

Lake Frome’s vast salt-flat is a deal further “out there”, due west…so too the setting sun, at 5.19 pm on 06 June 2023.

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