Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
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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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…
Comments closed…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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For a giraffe, drinking is as necessary as it is for any other mammal.
The very act of positioning oneself to make drinking physically possible is, however, an enormously more delicate, demanding task for a giraffe than for other mammals.
Giraffes’ approach to a waterhole is always slow, tentative, hesitant…and in a group.
Anxiety and hyper vigilance are especially evident at the crucial moment when a giraffe has to decide that it is now “safe” – or not – to get into drinking position.
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General rule, when photographing animals, humans included:
ensure that their eyes are fully visible, in sharp focus, and looking at “you”, the viewer.
As is true of so many “rules”, this one is worth knowing.
Generally, it is a good idea to abide by it…but sometimes, the better idea is to break it…
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This little series concludes in northern Namibia, with a very elegant species of Antelope.
In the 1950s General Motors appropriated its name.
The “real thing” bears zero resemblance to any lumbering, oversized, grossly inefficient “Yank Tank”.
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…was an extraordinarily close one.
Prior to November 2022 I had never imagined that I would ever find myself so astonishingly near to a wild leopard, let alone that such an experience would prove the least exciting of four leopard encounters, all within a span of about ninety hours.
This post’s photos are in chronological sequence; the first three were taken within a single minute, and the final image’s “moment” occurred a whisker less seven minutes after the first.
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On our recent travels in south India we saw wild Asian/Asiatic elephants many times.
As you can see, such encounters with Elephas maximus do not only occur inside national parks and other “reserves”!
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The Indian boar, Sus scrofa cristatus, gets its subspecies name from the feature which sets it apart from all other wild boars.
When the bristles of an adult male’s dorsal crest are erect – and most of them are in this post’s image – he has the pig kingdom’s most spectacular mane.
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Spotted deer – aka “axis deer” or “chital” – are India’s emblematic deer; Axis axis is also India’s most widespread, most commonly-encountered deer species.
The local common name’s resemblance to “cheetah” is no coincidence; both names refer to the animal’s spotted coat.
Cheetahs were hunted to extinction in India; if current attempts to reintroduce them prove successful, cheetahs will resume their former place in the chital’s long list of predators.
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