I wonder how long it takes them to learn how to fold up their necks so they can fly properly.
Tag Archives: Peru 2015
Peru 2015 – Manatee
Manatees can come up out of the water.
Just not very far.
Peru 2015 – Black Collared Hawk
One nice thing about taking photos from a little boat is that you know you’ll scare the birds away. If you’re lucky, you get a shot of them flying in your direction or parallel to you. If not, well, I took a lot of photos of bird butts.
Peru 2015 – Clearwing Butterfly
This is the second clear- or glasswing butterfly that I’ve seen. Fundamentally, they’re not that interesting. They’re just butterflies that lack the scales on their wings that other butterflies have, so you can see through the wings just like you can with most insects.
However, seeing them in person is illogically fascinating because you don’t think of butterflies as regular insects, so when you see something that forces your mind to re-categorize them, it can be a little jarring.
Peru 2015 – Tarantula and Brother
One of these is my brother.
Peru 2015 – Sunset
Though I imagine it’s quite difficult to create a sky and river out of hammered gold and copper, it must be even more difficult to get them installed in the brief moment between when I return to the boat and get to the upper deck to shoot the sunset.
Peru 2015 – Snake
In order to see the animals, their process is to hire locals to bring the animals to us as we walked through the jungle. This approach puts money into the local economy, teaches locals to better appreciate their natural resources, and speeds up the process. It does not, however, create a lot of good photo opportunities.
Peru 2015 – Parrot
Parrots were very interesting birds to see in the wild, most of them forming large flocks that really liked these plants that made those little edible pods. Living in the US, most of the big flocks of birds that we see are sparrows or pigeons, and neither of those form the sorts of massive flocks that parrots do. To do see a huge flock like that, that is brightly coloured, and making all sorts of tweeting noises reminds one of when Twitter gets into a photo fight.
Peru 2015 – Cormorant
The colour of the water and the light of the cormorant indicates that it was near sunset. As cormorants cannot fish when the sun goes down, this is the last meal of the day. This means that the cormorant is having supper, not dinner.
Peru 2015 – Kingfisher
Did you know that kingfishers had blue feet?
Peru 2015 – Bullet Ant
These ants are about an inch long and have the worst bite in the world. They say that it feels like being hit by a bullet and that there’s nothing you can do to stop the pain for up to an hour.
This implies that there are enough people in Peru that have both been shot and bit by this ant, to provide evidence for this story.
Sounds like an unlucky place to live, actually.
Peru 2015 – Dolphins
This was the best shot I got of the dolphins. I spent a *lot* of time trying to get a good shot and, along the way, learned a lot about auto-focus modes and ways to speed up the camera. I took probably a thousand shots of the water and maybe 500 shots of dolphins in the water, and maybe 10 that are decent.
The problem is that the water is opaque and the dolphins don’t play with the wake like they do in the ocean. So you don’t know where they are until they’ve come up and are on the way down. If you’re lucky, you get one that repeats itself so you can get a good shot on the second go, but I was not so fortunate. I’m just glad that his show shows the beak and the pink colour. Most of the rest I got were of the younger grey dolphins.
Peru 2015 – Toucans
Toucans didn’t bother to show up until the last two days and, even then, were really far away. Still, it was pretty neat to see them wild.
Peru 2015 – Macaws
This is unusual because there are usually only even numbers of macaws. Either one of them has yet to find a mate or they are far a more liberal triad than the average macaw.
Peru 2015 – Tern
Terns are hard to photograph, especially if you’re trying to shoot from a moving boat during a rainstorm. I wanted to get a dive just as it was entering the water, but this is the best I managed that is still recognizable as a tern.
Peru 2015 – Barbet
The problem with birds with black heads is that you can never tell whether or not they were part in shadow.
Peru 2015 – Caracara
Caracara closing an agreement with a dragonfly with a handshake.
This may not be in humanity’s best interest.
Peru 2015 – Kingfisher
Really? Another kingfisher?
Maybe I took too many shots of these guys.
Peru 2015 – Sunset
Clouds are clumpy and very hard to distribute evenly across the sky.
Peru 2015 – Marmoset
Another marmoset shot under extremely difficult conditions. However, the shot is good enough that you can see how monkeys start out as a big monkey-shaped blob and then slowly diminish to nothingness as you reach the other end.