Category Archives: animals

Giraffe necking

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Though I had seen giraffes in zoos, it was a totally different experience to see wild creatures like these in their natural environment, on the Serengeti Plains, in Tanzania, in 2014. In a zoo, you are safe: the animal is confined and, if not tame, at least partially used to human interaction. In the Serengeti, though I never felt unsafe, I was very much aware that I was out of place, an intruder in a savage world, where death and violence are commonplace.

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I felt this most when we were watching these three young male giraffes. Initially, they looked like they were just hanging out like good buddies but, as we watched, they started necking. This is a common, often violent ritual to establish dominance in the herd or to impress a female. They swing their necks and try to hit each other with those hard bumps (ossicles) on the tops of their heads. And it must hurt – those whacks and thumps sounded brutal and can apparently be heard up to a kilometre away. These three didn’t injure each other but older males have been known to knock each other unconscious with the power of their blows. It was certainly sobering to watch.

The ponies of Dartmoor

13 Sunday Mar 2016

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In August 2014 I visited Dartmoor for the first time, and loved it. During a week-long holiday with my friend Viv, we twice went walking on the moors and, of course, saw many of the beautiful Dartmoor ponies. These days the ponies are not really wild animals – their owners are allowed to graze them on the moorlands as they help to maintain the pastureland habitat. Neither are they the original pure-bred Dartmoor ponies as, over the centuries, there has been much interbreeding between the native pony, mixed breeds and even Shetland ponies.

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Domesticated ponies have been living on Dartmoor a very long time. The first historical record dates to AD 1012 but hoof prints discovered in the 1970s proved that ponies had been on the moors since at least 1500 BC. In medieval times they were used to transport all many of goods from place to place and in the 1800s they hauled trucks laden with granite up and down the tramways that can still be seen on the moors. Ponies were also the workhorses of the mining industry, hauling coal wagons to and fro underground. These days, they enjoy a much easier life, free to roam and munch their way through the abundant pasture, with the flies and midges the only annoyance in their otherwise peaceful days.

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The horse in striped pyjamas

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Eight things you might not have known about zebras, until now:

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1 Zebras can move fast, up to 65mph in fact, which, when combined with superb stamina and some cunning zigzagging moves, means they can outrun most of the creatures that might want to eat them.

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2 Zebras are relatively long-lived animals, clocking up between 20 and 30 years in the wild, and up to 40 in zoos.

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3 Though never domesticated, zebras were once trained to pull chariots around the hippodromes of Ancient Rome.

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4 Zebras are clever communicators. As well as oral expression (barks, whinnies and sniffing sounds), they also use facial expressions and the position of their ears and tails to convey how they feel. Beware the zebra with wide-open eyes, bared teeth and ears pulled backwards – he’s mad!

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5 As the old Eddie Arnold song goes, a zebra looks like a horse in striped pyjamas. Turns out, zebras sleep like horses too, standing up and only when safe amongst the herd.

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6 The herd means protection for a zebra, and the larger the herd the better, as then more ears and eyes are keeping watch. Other grazing animals like antelope and wildebeest are also welcome.

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7 Talking of herds – what about that incredible spectacle, the annual 1800-mile migration of zebras, antelopes and wildebeest between Kenya’s Maasai Mara and Tanzania’s mighty Serengeti Plains?

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8 And, finally, about those striped pyjamas – it seems zebras evolved stripes for a multitude of reasons:  en masse in a herd, their stripes visually merge so predators have a tough job focusing on individual animals; stripes also distort distance in low light (i.e. at dawn and dusk); they’re a unique visual fingerprint helping zebras recognise each other; they’re a form of temperature control as stripes are believed to disperse around 70% of the sun’s heat; and new research has shown that their monochrome pattern confuses the visual systems of flies, thus helping to keep those annoying critters at bay.

My photographs of zebras were taken on the Serengeti Plains and in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 2014, at the end of a week-long trip with The Giving Lens, an organisation that combines photography workshops with mentoring, media and financial support for local NGOs.

In honour of elephants

03 Thursday Mar 2016

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For World Wildlife Day …

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‘Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.’ ~ John Donne

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‘If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.’ ~ Desmond Tutu

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‘Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing – if this must come – seems the most tragic of all. I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea.’ ~ Peter Matthiessen, The Tree Where Man Was Born

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‘I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I’ve ever met.’ ~ Herb Caen

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‘I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.’ ~ Noel Coward

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‘Elephants love reunions. They recognize one another after years and years of separation and greet each other with wild, boisterous joy. There’s bellowing and trumpeting, ear flapping and rubbing. Trunks entwine.’ ~ Jennifer Richard Jacobson, Small as an Elephant

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‘They say that somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go to lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies, and soar away, light spirits at the end.’ ~ Robert McCammon, Boy’s Life

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‘The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?’ ~ David Attenborough

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My photographs of elephants were taken on the Serengeti Plains and in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 2014, at the end of a week-long trip with The Giving Lens, an organisation that combines photography workshops with mentoring, media and financial support for local NGOs.

Happy New Year of the Monkey!

13 Saturday Feb 2016

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As Asian people around the world are celebrating their New Year, the beginning of the year of the monkey, I thought I would also post a little celebration of monkeys. These are some of the beautiful creatures I have been privileged to see and photograph in the wild.

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Black howler monkeys, at a sanctuary in Le Cumbre, Argentina

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In Cambodia, long-tailed macaques can be seen around the temples of Angkor Wat

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The Barbary macaque (also known as the Barbary ape) in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco

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In the Peruvian Amazon, in the jungle near Manu, a brown capuchin monkey

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Baboons near the entrance to the Ngorongoro Crater, in Tanzania (above and below)

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A vervet monkey living on the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania

Feeling sheepish?

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

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I come from a land of sheep (New Zealand) and now I live in another (Wales). Sheep are not only important in the cultures and economies of both countries, they also figure in many aspects of our daily lives. We wear clothes made from their wool, use products made from their leather and, in the English language, we regularly use many sheep-based idioms.

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If you’re feeling sheepish, you’re embarrassed because you know you’ve done something silly or wrong. You might be the black sheep of the family, the one who’s different, perhaps disreputable, maybe unloved. You should beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the dangerous person who’s pretending to be harmless. If you work as a manager, you might need to separate the sheep from the goats, i.e. separate those people who are competent and worth keeping from those who are not. If you fancy someone but feeling shy and a little foolish, you might make sheep’s eyes at them. And if you’re having trouble getting to sleep at night, then you could always try counting sheep!

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