Now photos from Glacier 2008 are up on my website also.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Website Updates
I'm happy to announce that some of the 650 pictures I took in Tanzania are now up. I pared it down to 38 and it's not a huge download, so enjoy! The applet should load within this post. If you want to view it full-size, click here.
Once you get to the end of the slideshow it will automatically redirect you to the main rangernathan page, but there is a link there back to the blog.
Once you get to the end of the slideshow it will automatically redirect you to the main rangernathan page, but there is a link there back to the blog.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Africa: Lists & Lessons
In the waning hours of my time in Tanzania, I am ready to publish my list of species observed on the trip. It's a long list of 108 birds, 34 mammals, and 5 reptiles. These species were observed in Mt. Kilimanjaro, Olduvai Gorge, Lake Manyara, Tarangire, and Ngorongoro Crater, or along the way between the parks.
Reptiles:
crocodile
five-lined skink
green-headed agama
leopard turtle
red-headed agama
Mammals:
baboon
banded mongoose
bat-eared fox
black rhinoceros
black-backed jackal
black-faced vervet
blue monkey
bush hyrax
bushbuck
cape buffalo
cheetah
dik dik
dwarf mongoose
eland
elephant
four-striped grass mouse
giraffe
Grant's gazelle
hartebeest
hippopotamus
impala
leopard
lion
oribi
reedbuck
rock hyrax
side-striped hyena
spotted hyena
Thomson's gazelle
topi
warthog
waterbuck
wildebeest
zebra
Birds:
Abyssinian ground hornbill
African black crake
African black crow
African black-headed oriole
African drongo
African gray hornbill
African mourning dove
African palm swift
African pied wagtail
African spoonbill
ashy starling
augur buzzard
bare-faced go-away bird
bateleur
black kite
black-breasted snake eagle
black-crowned night heron
black-headed heron
black-shouldered kite
blacksmith lapwing
Black-winged stilt
brown snake eagle
brown-crowned tchagra
cape robin-chat
cape rook
capped wheatear
cattle egret
common moorhen
crested hoopoe
crowned eagle
crowned lapwing
dark chanting goshawk
D'Arnaud's barbet
Egyptian goose
Fischer's lovebird
garden bulbul
glossy ibis
goliath heron
gray crowned crane
gray heron
gray kestrel
gray-headed kingfisher
gray-headed sparrow
great white pelican
greater flamingo
green-backed heron
grey-capped social weaver
hadida ibis
hammerkop
Hartlaub's turaco
helmeted guineafowl
Hottentot teal
Kori bustard
lappet-faced vulture
laughing dove
lesser flamingo
lilac-breasted roller
little bee-eater
little swift
long-tailed fiscal shrike
magpie shrike
malachite kingfisher
Marabou stork
masked weaver
mocking cliff chat
Namaqua dove
ostrich
pied crow
purple grenadier
red-and-yellow barbet
red-billed buffalo-weaver
red-billed firefinch
red-billed hornbill
red-billed oxpecker
red-billed quelea
red-cheeked cordon-bleu
red-necked spurfowl
red-winged bush lark
reed cormorant
Reichenow's weaver
ring-necked dove
rufous sparrow
sacred ibis
secretarybird
silverbird
silvery-cheeked hornbill
Southern black flycatcher
speckled mousebird
stone chat
streaky canary
superb starling
Tacazze sunbird
tawny eagle
three-banded plover
variable sunbird
Verreaux's eagle-owl
violet wood-hoopoe
Von der Decken's hornbill
wattled starling
white-backed vulture
white-bellied bustard
white-fronted bee eater
white-headed buffalo weaver
white-necked raven
white-rumped helmet-shrike
wire-tailed swallow
yellow-billed stork
yellow-necked spurfowl
I have stories for many of the animals, too many to relate in the short time I have. Probably the coolest thing we saw was a cheetah watching some gazelles, which we watched at close range. I got unbelievable pictures of it. We saw lions eating a warthog, and half a zebra in the river with a vulture pecking at it (a Nile crocodile ate the other half). For birds, many of them were observed right at my feet in picnic areas; the black kite stole my BLT out of my hand. Yellow-necked spurfowl were outside our tent at Tarangire our last night of safari, and they make an annoying, loud sound. The helmet-shrike and magpie shrike are two of the easiest-to-find birds all along the road.
Now, for my final section today, I want to share some lessons learned in Africa (in no particular order). I wrote these down while eating at the Ethiopian restaurant in Arusha, which is probably my favorite restaurant.
What I Learned in Africa:
-Barack Obama is HUGE here, for unclear reasons, but people seem to know who he is what he's doing. Obama bumber stickers, window art, and even corner merchants' stands have Obama stuff all over.
-White people must have all the money; the people selling stuff don't hassle anyone else.
-Catalytic converters should be universal, as should garbage pick-up (instead of everyone burning it) and plastic recycling. They do, however, recycle glass here, by re-using the bottles.
-Beware the room labeled "shower/urinal." I didn't go in there, and I'm not sure what I would have found.
-There's a good reason you've never seen a squat toilet in the U.S.
-A car/truck can always fit at least one more bag/person on the roof, no matter how many bags/people are already up there.
-Forget about AIDS funding; we need to be dropping tartar-control toothpaste from B-52s on these people
-That batik is not worth 25,000 shillings like that guy's asking for it. It's worth 2,500.
-A hawk can and will steal your sandwich. Damn, I miss that BLT.
-Eggs and bananas, two abundant local food products, are included in 2 or 3 meals every day. I question how healthy this diet really is. I'm seriously sick of eggs and bananas, two things I don't normally eat, EVER!
-That dead wildebeest in the river did not die of natural causes.
-Police checkpoints in Zanzibar are kind of like that scene in Star Wars when Luke and Obi Wan arrive in Mos Eisley, except instead of using the force to get through the checkpoint, your taxi driver will less-than-stealthily hand over a bribe.
-For the 84th time, I do NOT NEED A MASSAGE. I'M ALREADY ON THE BEACH IN A BEACH CHAIR. HOW COULD I GET MORE COMFORTABLE?
-Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
-Better keep an eye on that baboon if you want to keep any part of your lunch.
-Crosswalks and trafic signals are more important than you think, but you don't realize that until you are deprived of both and people drive on the wrong side of the road.
-Primary school is free for kids in Tanzania, so why is that 6-year-old herding goats all day?
-If someone forgets to fill the water tank, you won't be taking that well-deserved shower or flushing your toilet.
-"Please do not clean my room. Do NOT enter. No!!" apparently sounds a lot like, "Clean my room, please!"
-Eggs and bananas. All the time. It's serious.
-Breakfast "sausage" is really a beef frank without a bun or condiments.
-1984 Land Rover > 2007 Toyota Land Cruiser
-Why does it matter what year my U.S. dollar was minted? It says "Legal tender for all debts public and private" right on it! You can't reject this! Forget it! What's the shilingi rate?
-Dirt will permeate everything you bring with you to Africa.
Reptiles:
crocodile
five-lined skink
green-headed agama
leopard turtle
red-headed agama
Mammals:
baboon
banded mongoose
bat-eared fox
black rhinoceros
black-backed jackal
black-faced vervet
blue monkey
bush hyrax
bushbuck
cape buffalo
cheetah
dik dik
dwarf mongoose
eland
elephant
four-striped grass mouse
giraffe
Grant's gazelle
hartebeest
hippopotamus
impala
leopard
lion
oribi
reedbuck
rock hyrax
side-striped hyena
spotted hyena
Thomson's gazelle
topi
warthog
waterbuck
wildebeest
zebra
Birds:
Abyssinian ground hornbill
African black crake
African black crow
African black-headed oriole
African drongo
African gray hornbill
African mourning dove
African palm swift
African pied wagtail
African spoonbill
ashy starling
augur buzzard
bare-faced go-away bird
bateleur
black kite
black-breasted snake eagle
black-crowned night heron
black-headed heron
black-shouldered kite
blacksmith lapwing
Black-winged stilt
brown snake eagle
brown-crowned tchagra
cape robin-chat
cape rook
capped wheatear
cattle egret
common moorhen
crested hoopoe
crowned eagle
crowned lapwing
dark chanting goshawk
D'Arnaud's barbet
Egyptian goose
Fischer's lovebird
garden bulbul
glossy ibis
goliath heron
gray crowned crane
gray heron
gray kestrel
gray-headed kingfisher
gray-headed sparrow
great white pelican
greater flamingo
green-backed heron
grey-capped social weaver
hadida ibis
hammerkop
Hartlaub's turaco
helmeted guineafowl
Hottentot teal
Kori bustard
lappet-faced vulture
laughing dove
lesser flamingo
lilac-breasted roller
little bee-eater
little swift
long-tailed fiscal shrike
magpie shrike
malachite kingfisher
Marabou stork
masked weaver
mocking cliff chat
Namaqua dove
ostrich
pied crow
purple grenadier
red-and-yellow barbet
red-billed buffalo-weaver
red-billed firefinch
red-billed hornbill
red-billed oxpecker
red-billed quelea
red-cheeked cordon-bleu
red-necked spurfowl
red-winged bush lark
reed cormorant
Reichenow's weaver
ring-necked dove
rufous sparrow
sacred ibis
secretarybird
silverbird
silvery-cheeked hornbill
Southern black flycatcher
speckled mousebird
stone chat
streaky canary
superb starling
Tacazze sunbird
tawny eagle
three-banded plover
variable sunbird
Verreaux's eagle-owl
violet wood-hoopoe
Von der Decken's hornbill
wattled starling
white-backed vulture
white-bellied bustard
white-fronted bee eater
white-headed buffalo weaver
white-necked raven
white-rumped helmet-shrike
wire-tailed swallow
yellow-billed stork
yellow-necked spurfowl
I have stories for many of the animals, too many to relate in the short time I have. Probably the coolest thing we saw was a cheetah watching some gazelles, which we watched at close range. I got unbelievable pictures of it. We saw lions eating a warthog, and half a zebra in the river with a vulture pecking at it (a Nile crocodile ate the other half). For birds, many of them were observed right at my feet in picnic areas; the black kite stole my BLT out of my hand. Yellow-necked spurfowl were outside our tent at Tarangire our last night of safari, and they make an annoying, loud sound. The helmet-shrike and magpie shrike are two of the easiest-to-find birds all along the road.
Now, for my final section today, I want to share some lessons learned in Africa (in no particular order). I wrote these down while eating at the Ethiopian restaurant in Arusha, which is probably my favorite restaurant.
What I Learned in Africa:
-Barack Obama is HUGE here, for unclear reasons, but people seem to know who he is what he's doing. Obama bumber stickers, window art, and even corner merchants' stands have Obama stuff all over.
-White people must have all the money; the people selling stuff don't hassle anyone else.
-Catalytic converters should be universal, as should garbage pick-up (instead of everyone burning it) and plastic recycling. They do, however, recycle glass here, by re-using the bottles.
-Beware the room labeled "shower/urinal." I didn't go in there, and I'm not sure what I would have found.
-There's a good reason you've never seen a squat toilet in the U.S.
-A car/truck can always fit at least one more bag/person on the roof, no matter how many bags/people are already up there.
-Forget about AIDS funding; we need to be dropping tartar-control toothpaste from B-52s on these people
-That batik is not worth 25,000 shillings like that guy's asking for it. It's worth 2,500.
-A hawk can and will steal your sandwich. Damn, I miss that BLT.
-Eggs and bananas, two abundant local food products, are included in 2 or 3 meals every day. I question how healthy this diet really is. I'm seriously sick of eggs and bananas, two things I don't normally eat, EVER!
-That dead wildebeest in the river did not die of natural causes.
-Police checkpoints in Zanzibar are kind of like that scene in Star Wars when Luke and Obi Wan arrive in Mos Eisley, except instead of using the force to get through the checkpoint, your taxi driver will less-than-stealthily hand over a bribe.
-For the 84th time, I do NOT NEED A MASSAGE. I'M ALREADY ON THE BEACH IN A BEACH CHAIR. HOW COULD I GET MORE COMFORTABLE?
-Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
-Better keep an eye on that baboon if you want to keep any part of your lunch.
-Crosswalks and trafic signals are more important than you think, but you don't realize that until you are deprived of both and people drive on the wrong side of the road.
-Primary school is free for kids in Tanzania, so why is that 6-year-old herding goats all day?
-If someone forgets to fill the water tank, you won't be taking that well-deserved shower or flushing your toilet.
-"Please do not clean my room. Do NOT enter. No!!" apparently sounds a lot like, "Clean my room, please!"
-Eggs and bananas. All the time. It's serious.
-Breakfast "sausage" is really a beef frank without a bun or condiments.
-1984 Land Rover > 2007 Toyota Land Cruiser
-Why does it matter what year my U.S. dollar was minted? It says "Legal tender for all debts public and private" right on it! You can't reject this! Forget it! What's the shilingi rate?
-Dirt will permeate everything you bring with you to Africa.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Bonanza!
Since the last post, we've been driving around non-stop on awful dirt "roads" to Lake Manyara National Park, Serengeti National Park (4 days), and Ngorongoro Crater. Tomorrow we're going to Tarangire park before our stay in Zanzibar.
Everything has been really awesome. I'll post a list of all the wildlife I've seen and positively identified after I get home. Put simply, we have seen EVERYTHING. The only thing I kind of wanted to see that I haven't yet is a black heron, and the others I'd want to see are all nocturnal and I'm not going out there.
We stayed in a tent camp just north of Serengeti for three nights. It is a glorified house tent with a thatch roof over it and a bathroom just behind it. The tent is reasonably sealed off from the outside, but the bathroom, for some reason, is only half-sealed. This allowed a giant spider to live in our sink area all three nights. His name was Frederick, and as long as Amber could see him and talk to him, it was ok. I also helped a giant millipede find its way out. A 5-lined skink ate moths by the door. Herds of migrating zebras and wildebeest were just outside the camp, and we could hear lions roaring at night. By the way, the local tribesmen worked at security guards for the camp - not for people but for animals. They actually carried bows and arrows to defend us from lions and leopards.
Leopards are rare to see, but we saw one every day for 4 days. We saw 5 black rhinos today in Ngorongoro. We've seen lions, cheetahs, hyenas, giraffes, elephants, hippos, crocodiles at extremely close range. There's just too much to convey. It's totally awesome. Everything you saw in The Lion King is real (including the rocky outcroppings; they're called kopjes), and it really lives in such abundance. Many of my pictures show 4 or 5 species of birds and mammals all together in the frame. Crazy!
Our guide, Dennis, has been phenomenal. He finds animals a mile away that I would never have seen and always has something interesting to say about everything we see. He also likes to joke around by using sarcasm, "Oh, it's only 50 km to the next camp," after we've been in the car 9 hours. So I didn't take him seriously today when he said the black kites at this particular spot would take your sandwich. I held my lunch close, but never saw the kite that swooped down from behind me and stole my sandwich right out of my hand. Amber screamed; I just stared at my sandwich as it blew apart into 8 pieces and disappeared in seconds. The first three bites of that BLT were darn good, and I wish I could have finished it.
I'll get back to the blog later with that long list of first contact with wild animals. It's very long, and grows every day.
Everything has been really awesome. I'll post a list of all the wildlife I've seen and positively identified after I get home. Put simply, we have seen EVERYTHING. The only thing I kind of wanted to see that I haven't yet is a black heron, and the others I'd want to see are all nocturnal and I'm not going out there.
We stayed in a tent camp just north of Serengeti for three nights. It is a glorified house tent with a thatch roof over it and a bathroom just behind it. The tent is reasonably sealed off from the outside, but the bathroom, for some reason, is only half-sealed. This allowed a giant spider to live in our sink area all three nights. His name was Frederick, and as long as Amber could see him and talk to him, it was ok. I also helped a giant millipede find its way out. A 5-lined skink ate moths by the door. Herds of migrating zebras and wildebeest were just outside the camp, and we could hear lions roaring at night. By the way, the local tribesmen worked at security guards for the camp - not for people but for animals. They actually carried bows and arrows to defend us from lions and leopards.
Leopards are rare to see, but we saw one every day for 4 days. We saw 5 black rhinos today in Ngorongoro. We've seen lions, cheetahs, hyenas, giraffes, elephants, hippos, crocodiles at extremely close range. There's just too much to convey. It's totally awesome. Everything you saw in The Lion King is real (including the rocky outcroppings; they're called kopjes), and it really lives in such abundance. Many of my pictures show 4 or 5 species of birds and mammals all together in the frame. Crazy!
Our guide, Dennis, has been phenomenal. He finds animals a mile away that I would never have seen and always has something interesting to say about everything we see. He also likes to joke around by using sarcasm, "Oh, it's only 50 km to the next camp," after we've been in the car 9 hours. So I didn't take him seriously today when he said the black kites at this particular spot would take your sandwich. I held my lunch close, but never saw the kite that swooped down from behind me and stole my sandwich right out of my hand. Amber screamed; I just stared at my sandwich as it blew apart into 8 pieces and disappeared in seconds. The first three bites of that BLT were darn good, and I wish I could have finished it.
I'll get back to the blog later with that long list of first contact with wild animals. It's very long, and grows every day.
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