A Couple of Twofers from Africa – Terry Thormin

The weather here on Vancouver Island has been rather miserable for the last little while, lots of overcast, rainy days that are not great for nature photography. For this reason I have spent a lot of time reworking some older images that I knew I could improve with the latest version of Photoshop Elements and a better knowledge of how it works. I have concentrated on my images from a trip I took to Africa back in 2007. At the time I was using a Canon Powershot S3 IS. This little point-and-shoot camera took some pretty good photos and was ideal for Africa. So not having anything current to blog about I decided to post two of my favorite photos from that trip. If you click on the images you will be able to view them full size.

This is the Malachite Kingfisher, one of the smallest kingfishers in Africa (only the Pygmy Kingfisher is smaller) and certainly one of the most colourful. On top of that it has a mole cricket in its bill, thus encompassing two of my passions, birds and insects in the one photo. This tiny little kingfisher was hunting low along the bank of the Chobe River in Botswana and I photographed it from a boat while exploring the river with my tour group. Mole crickets are fascinating insects that spend most of their lives underground. They are easily identified by the broad, spade-like front legs that are used for digging.

This photo is of a White-tailed Shrike with a Marbled Emperor, a large Saturnid moth in its bill. It was taken at Kamanjab in northern Namibia. I saw the bird pluck the moth from low off the trunk of a tree then fly down to the ground and proceed to beat the moth against the ground until all the wings were broken off. It wasn’t until then that it flew away and presumably ate the moth. During this whole procedure it ignored me allowing me to get quite close for photographs. This bird is endemic to thorn scrub areas of western Namibia and Angola.

If you want to see more of my African images you can find them on my Smugmug site here.