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MAASAI MARA SERVAL

Serval, Pose Plains, Maasai Mara, August 2022

Card No. 15 in the Brooke Bond ‘African Wild Life’ series, first published in 1962 was the Serval. Illustrated and described by Charles F Tunnicliffe it is a truly beautiful animal. With legs, even more out of proportion than Cheetah, in fact the longest of any cat compared to its body size that give it a stilted appearance. It shares a finely spotted coat too, ‘at one time much in favour with native chiefs for mantles, and even today its fur is used for that purpose by the European furriers’ wrote Tunnicliffe 60 years ago. When photographing wildlife I am often thinking of an image that looks like one of his tea card paintings - I might just have what I was looking for!

We had a couple of Serval encounters on the recent Wild Images Maasai Mara tour. The first was in very harsh late morning light and very nice, but it was more of a watching experience as it hunted in a sea of grass, so typical of the Mara plains. As we waited for it to show in the open, more safari vehicles arrived and made viewing space tricky and backgrounds far from ideal, so we abandoned it. Our next meeting with the ‘Delicate Cat’ was late one afternoon at sunset, when we received a call from our lodge’s other vehicles that a Serval was not far away. This time we had it completely to ourselves for about half an hour, on the prowl in the long grass, striking various poses and crucially a few times without a mesh of grass stems across its face as so often is the way. The low light was actually really nice and the Canon R5 performed. FAB-U-LOUS!

Thanks to my awesome Maasai driver guide Tinka Jackson, without whose expert help these photos would not have been possible.

Brooke Bond Tea Card no. #15, African Wild Life 1962 by Charles F. Tunnicliffe

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HARE HIGHLIGHTS

Brown Hare, Ribchester

BROWN HARES ARE VERY CONSPICUOUS AROUND RIBCHESTER at the moment, as the grass in the fields is a little late in growing following the very cold start to the month. It always amazes me how daft they are, sometimes oblivious to me, when I crouch down. Standing up they keep their distance. Birding today included the first Yellow Wagtail for me and Phil in the village. I imagine the meadows in the valley were once full of them but they have not bred in East Lancs since I have been here and that’s over 15 years now. Three very loud single ‘tseeeep’ calls signalled its presence as we saw it fly over us on Shorton Lane and then over the farm towards the river. We spent some time trying to relocate it without any luck but I am not allowed off the footpaths here anymore so that was that.

Other highlights today included three Little Ringed Plovers opposite Churchgates, our highest number so far. There was a lot of song-flghting but one pair of them later flew west over Lower Barn. A redshank was on the field pool above Parsonage Farm where there are some excellent signs asking for dogs to be kept on leads in the field where the lapwings are nesting. There was a pair of skylarks here again today and three Greylag Geese too. A pair of Reed Buntings was on another field pool, a very scarce breeding bird down in the valley and I heard five singing Willow Warblers on my circuit this morning, also my highest count so far. No Common Sandpiper, whitethroat or redstart yet though but they have already reached nearby Alston and Brockholes so any day now but it looks like yesterday’s Fieldfares may have gone.

Reed Bunting, male moulting into breeding plumage - almost there now!

A lovely cloudscape over Ribchester at dawn this morning, forming high heaps of Altocumulus

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THE SNOW LEOPARD

The Snow Leopard carefully picks its way down the near vertical cliff face CLICK ON IMAGES FOR LIGHTBOX

THE Snow Leopard that is! Well, the best encounter of the 13 sigthings we had on my recent Wild Images/Birdquest Ladakh Snow Leopard special tour. Our visit to little Saspotsay started very slowly with a couple of unproductive short birding walks. There were a few Hill Pigeons among the Rock Doves but alas no Snow Pigeon. A Golden Eagle was sky dancing over the cliffs that tower over the small village and a few Robin Accentors and Cinereous Tits were in the bushes that line the fields below. We had just decided to explore the vicinity of the monastery that overlooks the village but as soon as we rolled up there, we got a call on the radio, ‘Snow Leopard!’. Not only was it a Snow Leopard but it was at a kill in the village! Nazir demonstrated his awesome driving skills in turning the minibus on a sixpence and we raced downhill to where the boys were gathered, behind the village looking up one of the narrow ravines that emerges at the foot of the tall cliffs. They told us that the cat had left its kill, an ibex wedged between some large boulders. The leopard had forced the poor ibex off the cliff and it fell to its death on the rocks below. Even more amazingly, the kill was directly behind one of Jigmet’s Snow Leopard Conservancy’s Himalayan Homestays! A villager had simply shouted to him ‘There is!’… ‘There is what?’ he wondered for a few seconds! Anyway, he was already arranging access for us and we were soon drinking masala chai in the yard of the homestay and waiting for the leopard to return to its kill only around 50 metres away.

‘The cat is here!’ said Jigmet

In typical style, Jigmet said ‘the cat is here’, I’ve heard him say this lots of times now!  The cat was indeed here, sitting high up on the crag looking down at the kill. I had been so sure that it would approach down the narrow ravine it had disappeared into but no, this incredible animal thinks nothing of climbing up and down sheer cliffs. Time went by and local folks came and went too, taking a look at the cat, excited kids held up by their mums so they could see. At last the leopard tired of the magpies bothering it and came down, more or less straight down, except for one small detour around a vertical section. Wow! An amazing show of agility. Even a passing Wallcreeper spotted by Jacob couldn’t distract us! We hid out of sight for a short while so it would continue all the way to its kill and then it proceeded to tuck in, starting with the intestines and juicy bits. An awesome experience but we did feel a bit sorry for the female ibex. We returned to our mountain homestay very happy after a very exciting day! Maybe it was the excitement, but I was still at 89% oxygen saturation this evening or maybe I was still struggling after the exertion of the Spango hikes a couple of days earlier?

 

Well there wasn’t really a question about where we would start the following day. We were back at Saspotsay before dawn in the hope of some more Snow Leopard action. However, there were far too many other folks with the same idea, a traffic jam of taxis and minibuses clogged up the tiny village’s streets. The leopard was also clearly full after a night at its ‘all you can eat’ ibex buffet. Although it was still on view, for a while at least, before noise levels grew too high, the views and light (in now overcast conditions) were nothing like the previous afternoon so we went off to look at the monastery. The government-funded road stretches a little further each year and has now reached the monastery but there wasn’t anything going on here either so after a lunch gathered around another second-hand Indian army wood burner at Jigmet’s son’s in-laws we headed back to Ullay. We had another enjoyable session watching the White-winged Grosbeaks, cracking rose hips again in the lower fields. At dusk the female flew into the sacred juniper tree, next to Nilza’s place, the only bird I’ve ever seen in it. Finally thanks a lot to Mr Snow Leopard himself, Jigmet Dadul, veteran of way over 300 Snow Leopard sightings and his Snow Leopard Quest team, without whom none of this would have been possible.

The party’s over. Next day Snow Leopard tourists at Saspotsay.

Sleepy Saspotsay. The Dzo (Yak X cow cross) has no idea of the danger lurking nearby.

Sleepy Saspotsay. The Dzo (Yak X cow cross) has no idea of the danger lurking nearby.

Commander Jigmet Dadul co-ordinates another Snow Leopard encounter.

Our minibus driver, Nazir from Kargil. If there is a better mountain bus driver I didn’t meet him yet.

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SNOW MONKEYS OF NAGANO

Wide angle view. I put a 17mm lens on the ground right in front of the monkey in one of the pathways through the snow and it skipped over the top of it.

Traversing Tokyo’s rail network in order to get to the Snow Monkeys saves a lot of time compared to a long bus journey, once you have survived the complexity of buying tickets, humping and lumping all your kit up and down various escalators and then working out which queue to stand in at the platform – they are all clearly marked so there is not scrum getting on and off trains and some of the Tokyo metro even has automatic gates on the platform itself so the trains can speed in and stop more quickly, before the gates, which are perfectly in line with their doors open! Oh, and then there also is a unique electro music jingle for every station! We were fortunate to see several Shinkansens coming and going before ours, including a pink one! Like missing a fly-by rare bird, I was disappointed not to get a photo of it. Travelling by bullet train was another quintessentially Japanese experience, boarding was very efficient, as to be expected and before long we were whizzing through the Tokyo suburbs at around 260kmph. Part of the world’s largest metropolitan area and home to around 38 million people, it is also one of the most densely populated. Apartment blocks stretch as far as the eye can see, within touching distance of one another but all looking modern, new, clean and well maintained. I have never seen anywhere like Tokyo. In under two hours we were far away from the city and in the heart of the Japanese Alps.

Shinkansen! A not-to-be-missed, quintessential Japanese experience. Slow shutter speed to blur the train approaching the platform.

Alighting at Nagano, proud host city of the 1998 Winter Olympics, we then made the short drive to the spa/ski resort town of Yudanaka, our base for the next three nights. We arrived in good time to spend the afternoon at the Snow Monkey Park. It is easy to forget that this is not actually a safari park and the Japanese Macaques (AKA Snow Monkeys) are of wild origin and are free to roam as they wish. However, with their free open-air hot bath and food supply, why would they want to stray? The monkey park entrance is around 20 minutes walk along a snowy contour trail from the nearest car park, involving a total of 81 steps, 31 at the start and another 50 near the monkey park entrance itself. Our first afternoon in the vicinity of the monkeys’ onsen produced some nice portraits, with a few flakes of snow in the air from 2pm onwards and some action shots of the monkeys walking along the rim of their hot tub but it was on our second day that things got really interesting.

Using a bank of snow to blur the foreground. This style is very popular these days.

 For the first time in 90 years there had not been any snowfall in this region during the month of January, so imagine our delight when it started to chuck it down within hours of our arrival. With snowflakes falling steadily on my head while I was up to my neck in the 40 degrees warm water, the outdoor onsen at our hotel was very nice. Just like what would be happening to the monkeys the following day. No wonder they like it so much. We had lots of great possibilities in the snow. For a start, those who wanted photos of monkeys in the pool itself had plenty of opportunities but in the extreme cold there was a lot of steam too. There was a lot of activity around the pool as animals visited it in sometimes horizontally blasting snow. I tried for something different to the stereotypic monkey-in-a-bath photo, with a combination of fast and slow shutter speeds, either freezing or blurring the snowflakes into streaks across the image, with some great expressions on the monkeys faces. The snow also offered blurred foregrounds with which to partly obscure the monkeys as seems to be the fashion of the moment. The monkeys were so habituated they would walk right through a crowd of tourists and even hop over my camera when I stuck the lens in their way for an extreme close-up, wide angle view. We spent all day at the monkey park, with a break for a much-appreciated simple and very tasty hot lunch of Sansai Saba (= Mountain Vegetable Noodle Soup) followed by Chimaki (triangular rice cakes, wrapped in moist bamboo leaves) at the nearby onsen. The onsen itself here is sometimes shared by both human and monkey bathers! The snow continued to fall on and off all day and the monkey action kept some of us occupied right until closing time when the light turned blue again as evening shadows crept up the sides of the narrow valley in which the park is located. It was also a pleasure to meet ‘Mr Birding Japan’ himself, Mark Brazil, here. ‘Where do you usually see serow?’…’Oh there’s one right now’. How’s that for skill? Happily, it stayed long enough, lumbering up the snow-covered slope opposite the visitor center, for all to catch up with this weird-looking goat-like creature. Otherwise the cold, snowy forests were very quiet, and I only managed a single species of bird all day, a flock of Eurasian Nuthatches.

Over-exposed in processing, to isolate the subjects, a mum carrying her little one through deeper snow.

Slower shutter speed to turn the snow flakes to streaks giving an impression of the blizzard.

Eye contact. I tried to avoid taking the same photos as everyone else but it’s hard to avoid at least a few monkey face portraits!

 Our second full day at the monkey park was bright and sunny and much of the snow that fell the previous day melted. The monkey activity was different too, many of them spent the majority of the day on the sunny slope opposite the visitor center, only descending briefly at feeding time and again towards the end of the day, when they mostly gathered on the opposite bank of the stream. Some activity continued at the monkey onsen all day though. We added both Sika Deer and Wild Boar to our mammal list, both apparently very infrequent visitors here at this time of year! Sunlit portraits were available today as well as action shots of groups of baby monkeys playing together across the river as well as a disturbing incident when one apparently psycho female tried to injure several tiny babies, biting them viciously before being fought off by their guardian mums. We very much enjoyed our stay in the mountains, with some great photo opps with the monkeys and some really wonderful food. The hotel even broke out their very stylish US$15 Japanese chopsticks on occasion, so fine you could pick up individual grains of rice with them… and did I mention the onsen? This one was voted the best of the tour, although it was a shame not to save the best ‘til last. At first it feels a bit weird to bath naked in the same pool as strangers but the relaxing experience of the geothermally heated, mineral-laden water made it worthwhile. I also figured out that to avoid the jibber jabber of the noisy gaijin ski-ers that shared our hotel, a late visit to the onsen after our evening meal was usually much quieter (although it is customary to go to the onsen before your evening meal).

Ah, that’s got it! Another slower shutter speed image to blur some movement.

Don’t ignore the cold blue light of the shadows to exagerrate the impression of the surroundings.

Out-of-focus can still work/snowflakes against a dark background.

Even more out focus can still work…maybe?

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