Barana - Kala Wewa, Sri Lanka

 

Barana was in musth when we decided to visit the Kala Wewa area a few weeks ago. We got there around midday and had to wait a few hours until he made his appearance. Fortunately there was a herd of elephants at a water and they provided us with a number of photographic opportunities while we waited. Barana's presence was given away by the odour of the secretions from his temporal ducts that carried on the wind. We watched and photographed him for a few hours as he drank his fill at the edge of the wewa and we left him feeding on the plains.

Sloth Bear - Wilpattu, Sri Lanka

 

Seeing Sloth Bears in Sri Lanka is relatively rare. I hadn't had a clear sighting for ages but that changed on my last trip to Wilpattu. We came across this bear while we were on a quiet morning drive. Fortunately there were only a handful of vehicles in the park and we were able to observe the bear without being disturbed.  We stopped the car and watched the bear walking down the road towards us. It walked about a 100 meters in our direction before it moved into the undergrowth and disappeared. 

Leopard - Kumana, Sri Lanka

 

We were fortunate to come across this leopard during an early morning round in Kumana a few days ago. It was nice to be in a park where you didn't have to deal with over crowding and noise at a sighting. We had this more or less to ourselves with a couple of other jeeps turning up as the leopard finished drinking and walked into the bush.

Jumping Spider - Colombo, Sri Lanka

I came across another Jumping Spider at home yesterday. Ended up photographing him for about 20 minutes and got some decent shots. There are more of them on my instagram profile. The setup was similar to last time with a flash in a small softbox positioned to the left of the camera. The lens was a 100mm macro.

Chestnut-eared Aracari - Pantanal, Brazil

The Chestnut-eared Aracari was the first bird I photographed in the Pantanal. We had just got to the place we were staying at and I saw it perched on a small tree in the garden. I grabbed the camera and took a few photographs of it before it moved on. It was a great start to what turned out to be a memorable few days.