Category: quota photo

Just another Flycatcher (thank goodness)

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Birthday breakfast at Kirstenbosch and then a quick wander around the gardens before it got too hot.

Crickets, Agamae(?), Agamas(?), Agamasses(?) eish…
An Agama – and then another one – and some pretty flowers (obviously), but not too many birds on show. We did get what we could, though.

I do really like the detail on this sunbird shot

And it even stands the zoom test:

…but the shadows really ruin the image.

And thus we were about to leave disappointed (as far as ‘togging birds went, at least), but then our old friend the inquisitive African Dusky Flycatcher (Muscicapa adusta) popped by.

Absolute bread and butter stuff, but such a willing and dependable subject: and just so cute.

More celebrations planned for this lunchtime, so I’ll have to love you and leave you for the moment, but the great news (T&Cs apply) is that there will almost certainly be more here tomorrow.

Quick sunset shot

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Busy morning, and we’re off to Stellies for some wine tasting this afternoon, so herewith a very quick denoised sunset shot from the weekend in Agulhas.

I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations, and I’ve worked out that the image above isn’t going to win any awards. What is is going to do is serve as a quota photo for today’s blog post – just in case things get messy later.

Which, given the amount of wine involved, they may well do.

Sugar

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A disappointingly unproductive morning at Kirstenbosch, with many of the local birds rather uninterested in being in front of any lenses. But on the plus side, there are certainly worse places to be while getting frustrated about the lack of feathered photographic subjects.

This Cape Sugarbird (Promerops cafer) was one of the few residents that was willing to have a quick shot taken today, whilst feeding – as expected – on one of the local Proteacae. But they are omnivorous and will also eat spiders and insects.
And if they get hungry… I’m sorry… they’ll what?!?

Dear God.

Let’s just hope that there is enough food around for the local Sugarbird population this year. Otherwise photography at Kirstenbosch is going to be even more difficult in the future.

Terns

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Busy day so a bit of a cheat and quota photo.

Here’s an image that I took this week of some Greater Crested Terns in Cape Agulhas.

And yes, it does need to be that big, thank you very much.

Nothing very cheaty about that, but I did already share this shot on my Instagram, so if you think you’ve seen it before, well, you might be right.

I don’t often do this sort of thing though, so you should probably follow me on the ‘Gram just to make sure you don’t miss out on anything. Or to catch me out when I try this sort of twice posting nonsense again.

Throwback

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I was going to do a big post about viruses, but then other stuff came up and so that will have to wait. And because the other stuff hasn’t yet gone away, this is going to be a quick TBT (which as everyone knows, stands for “Throwback Tuesday”, right?) post:

That’s a quick shot back up a corridor of cells in Robben Island Prison. This particular corridor being the one where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned: his cell is on the left hand side as we are looking, about 4 doors from the end. And yes, the cells did have wooden doors which were closed across the barred gates inside each night.

Not somewhere I would want to have been held, but to have the place to myself even for just a couple of minutes was such a privilege. Not many people get to take this photo without several (or more) tourists in sight.

Now. Back to the other stuff.

More tomorrow. Maybe even viruses!