Wildlife Wanderings

Sunday, 13 February 2011

Back to Blighty

Back home now, so no more scorching temperatures and crocodiles amongst the egrets, but sometimes the familiar is just as good. The Somerset Levels were cold and bright today. There were no rarities, per se, but just the sheer number of birds was spectacular. Last week we watched the massing of the starlings, but this week was hide-bound birding over the wetlands: teal, wigeon, snipe, shoveller, peregrines, buzzards and lots and lots of lapwings. The piping wigeon and the plaintive lapwings makes up the quintessential winter sound track.

Here are some piccies (I've just hit the 10000th photo on my new camera) to give you an idea of what I mean about "lots of birds"!:

Monday, 24 January 2011

Costa Rica and Panama over New Year 2010-11

My latest holiday with Claire, and her brother Dave, took us to Costa Rica and Panama.

It was not just a wildlife holiday, but we did pack in the excursions. C-R and Panama still support primary lowland rain forest as well as significant wetlands. These are very rich in bird, mammal, reptile and, of course, plant life.
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I only had a small Ricoh R8 with a 7x optical zoom and 10M pixels resolution, so these photos show how close we got to the birds particularly. It was a fantastic holiday and I would highly recommend it. Unfortunately it was impossible to photograph the many hummingbirds and my camera did not cope well with the dark forests.
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Bocas Del Toro, Panama

We went to the following places:

Costa Rica: San Jose, La Fortuna, Santa Elena, Manuel Antonio, Puerto Jimenez and Tortuguero

Panama: Bocas Del Toro, Boquete, the Panama Canal and Panama City

Anyway here are the best animal images from the three weeks, with a few plants thrown in too!

(Please note that the naming convention for the birds is the American Ornithologist's Union Check-list of North American Birds 7th Ed. - so don't complain if you disagree!).

Some of the birds seen but not caught on camera: