Gambian macro subjects

As many of you will know I am a keen herper, so before heading to the Gambia I had a lot of ideas about which snakes I'd like to photograph. This did NOT work out - during November, snakes are largely nocturnal in Gambia, myself and Matthew Fox spend a few very long nights searching through forest, farmland, scrub, swamp and even eco-lodge garden. Guess where we found the only significant snake of the trip...

That's not to say we didn't come up trumps with some other great macro subjects though. 

A blister beetle - so called as the adults secrete cantharadin (a poison) from their leg joints, which may make human skin blister. Apparently if ingested this can prove fatal!

Family - Meloidae

Genus - Actenodia

Senegal chameleon (Chamaeleo senegalensis).

Interesting huntsman spider found at night (Sparassidae sp.)

A Golden-orb weaver, Nephila sp. 

The lighting in these invertebrate pictures was created by careful selection of background scenery and the use of a little off camera fill flash (bounced - not direct). I have tried to place emphasis on the subject, also the web in the spider images, and to slightly underexpose the background. Let me know what you think!

A twin-spot assassin bug,  genus Platymeris sp. 

Many more macro subjects to come.

Kingfishers galore

Another favourite of most wildlife lovers, kingfishers. I managed to catch up with five species whilst in Gambia, not great from a birders perspective but as with my photographers hat on I'll take that! I achieved good portraits of the following 3 species, and a video of another which I will post at a later date.

The African pygmy kingfisher.

Giant kingfisher - seen at Abuko nature reserve, a gallery forest reserve, the dappled light in this shot is typical of the habitat.

African pied kingfisher, seen here at Tanji bird reserve, on the sea front, this species is unique amongst kingfishers in that it hovers before diving after prey, this enables it to exploit many different wetland habitats.

Messy eater.. Unfortunately once dropped, the poor thing couldn't find the fish again! Thankfully this particular bird had a pretty successful catch rate.

Gambian birds, and other critters..

I spent the first two weeks of November in the Gambia, photographing mostly birds.

Due to the nature of the trip, MOST of the photography was done on a walk about, chance encounter basis. However as I got to know the area and its regular species better I did do some more in depth species specific work.

Seeing as this is my first post I'll start with a subject that will appeal to almost everyone - and that I covered in depth, the Senegal parrot.

You can see in these images that the parrots are feeding on the flowers of different species of plant. These trees were in arable land planted with ground nuts, or peanuts. Once the workers left the fields, the flock these individuals belonged to would descend on the fields and feed until dusk before roosting in nearby trees, this made photographing the birds a lot easier than it could have otherwise been.