Rinkhals and all

A few weeks ago I had the rare privilege of spending time with an exceptional South African snake. I was spoilt because it was the first time I’d seen a Rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus) and it really was a beauty!  

The Rinkhals is a venomous snake from the mamba and cobra family and does closely resemble a cobra, spreading a hood and rearing up lifting as much as half the body off the ground. It is however not a true cobra as, apart from some skeletal differences, it has keeled dorsal scales (this means that they are rough to the touch – but don’t try it!) and gives birth to live young (normally 20-30, but up to 60). True cobras lay eggs (oviparous), not being viviparous like the Rinkhals.

Our specimen was caught by doctor of herpetology Chris Kelly, in a built up residential area in Grahamstown. This is not uncommon habitat for the snake and despite its biggest threat being urban development it is still found on small-holdings in and around Johannesburg. The snake prefers grassland, moist savanna, lowland forest and fynbos where toads are plentiful, but it is also partial to lizards, rodents, birds and other snakes. They’ll also take eggs which they swallow whole.

At over a meter and a half this Rinkhals was on the large side, far exceeding the average 1 meter length for the species. Size is a testament to age and there is no doubt that she (it was probably a female) was mature in years and well experienced. This might explain her aggressiveness when caught but when we released her about 8 kms out of town she was very calm, rearing up and standing her ground, spitting only once.

Rinkhals spit their venom in two jets, one from each fang in the front of the mouth. It is effective over 2-3 meters but is sprayed generally in the direction of their attacker, and only from an upright or reared position. Although a dangerous neurotoxic venom that mostly affects breathing and respiration, human fatalities from bites or spitting are rare. Flushing the eyes with large amounts of fluid is the best treatment for spits and an antibiotic ointment can be used to treat potential secondary infections. If treated, and unless infection occurs, normal sight should return after three or four days.

After our photoshoot together, the snake was carefully carried off to some nearby brush by a river and released unharmed. It is typical for this species to disappear quickly when disturbed but will face an attacker if cornered. It is also well known for shamming death, which it does particularly well, twisting the top part of their bodies upside down or sideways, even holding their tongue out the side of a partially opened mouth! Be nervous of a shamming snake though, as they will bite suddenly and readily if handled or approached to close.

So the old dame, wrinkles and all, went on her hopefully happy way. And so did we, grateful for the experience and grateful that she had no doubt, evaded the many threats and dangers of life as a snake, especially all the many mindless plonkers who would have preferred to see her dead.

What I learnt from a Turtle Tour: Part 2 “I don’t hate non DSLR photographic devices”

Recently I travelled to Kosi Bay on the very north eastern border of South Africa just before it gives way to Mozambique. Kosi is well known for its turtles that arrive each year to lay their eggs on their rapidly dwindling protected beaches. Witnessing this cycle is an extreme experience like no other. In my last post I wrote about my disappointment with, largely, my own engagement with the experience. In this post I want to write about the epiphany I had shortly thereafter.

As a professional photographer I have been a long time trying to establish an appropriate response to the deluge of digital photography that has shaped and fixated our present times. Accessibility to digital resources means that there are, well, more digital resources. This includes of course the images themselves. There are many more photographers taking/making many more photographs which have many more audiences. Just working with ratios, more cameras means more photographers, which means more images which means more, lets not deny it, good images (there are of course many more bad images too, but the bad images tend to have abrupt lifespans (like the many hatching turtles that I’ve not forgotten about and will return to in a moment). I’ve always resented the fact that ‘we’re all photographers now’. But it is true (that we are all photographers, and that I begrudge it). We are. I’ve resented the inability to separate (or worse, defend) my position as a professional photographer: “Wow. Your camera takes really nice pictures. It’s a fancy one right?”

And so there we were, the six of us, huddled round the back end of an exhausted female leatherback turtle as she diligently laid her eggs. There were rules of course: No torches unless they were red, no flashes unless the guide said it was permissible, no loud noises or talking (there might be a third post in this series in which I’ll talk more about rules and reality), keep together and keep away from the head. So it goes without saying (read my previous post) that trying to be successful and ethical photographer in company of others is a challenge to say the least – mostly a challenge to my sanity. As a professional photographer I know how best to work the light, little as it might be. As an understanding and ethical viewer in nature, I want to. Flash is disruptive, even to animals accustomed to it (don’t let anyone tell you it’s like lightening and animals don’t know the difference. You think animals, even as prehistoric as turtles don’t know when it is about to rain? Seriously!!). So I want to use flash, as little as possible (few flashes the better) and as unobtrusively as possible (de-powered, balanced and subtle). I do this because I am a professional, I know how to, and I am intelligent and respectful.

So what do the non-DSLR users do? They take pictures. Lots of them. And repeatedly. Do they depower the flash output on their iPad, mobile phone or point-and-shoot? Do they gently take a picture or two, then step back, not just to get out of the way, but more importantly to respectfully give the turtle space? No! They crowd and they snap and they flash away like every egg being laid needs its own picture. The people have got to be in it too, “Don’t forget about me. Here I am, smiling and crouched while the eggs arrive”. Now, with fabricated fascination I place my mouth into an ‘O’ then shovel it away again to ask, “Did you get that…? Take another one, just in case”. And then, like this is some kind of two-rand kiddies ride “Do you want a turn?” And that was when it hit me: I realised that I don’t hate iPads, mobile phones or point-and-shoot cameras. I hate their users. 

*It is with a degree of jest and tongue in cheek that I mask the identities of my fellow turtlers. They are not hated.

What I learnt from a Turtle Tour: Part 1 “Half a loaf is better than none”.

Watching turtles haul themselves onto the beaches of their birth to lay eggs in the dead of night, then heave themselves, exhausted, back towards the sea is a wildlife experiential mega tick. For me it was right up there with trekking with gorillas and means that diving with sharks (sans cage) and tracking tigers each move up a notch. But man was I disappointed!

Canon EOS 7D. Sigma 18-50mm lens at 18mm. ISO 400. f/5.6 @ 1 sec. Flash bounced of dunes and depowered to 1/8th

Don’t get me wrong the turtles (leatherback and loggerhead), the seeing (at night from about 8pm till 11.30pm), the laying (about 80-120 spherical eggs, each a little larger than a golf ball), the effort (120m each way) and the odds (2-3 hatchings in every 1000 surviving to adulthood) is truly humbling. But man was I disappointed!

My biggest disappointment was with myself. I was reminded of something I knew already, but I was somehow not able to apply my own advice: “Sometimes it is okay not to take pictures”. I always tell my students that sometimes things don’t work out, conditions are too far gone and you have just got to enjoy the experience and be anything other than a photographer. Easier said than done!

The conditions, photographically speaking were terrible: overcast, no moon, wind, flash was only occasionally allowed and nowhere near the head (more detail on this in Part 2) and red torches only. Also, I was with another group of four and I detest front row camera competitiveness (this is why I have seldom, and have no aspiration to derive income from political photojournalism). Furthermore, having my photographic roots in the safari industry, I also fiercely hold to ethical and respectful treatment in every situation and in all wildlife encounters. I also expect others to.

Canon Eos 7D. Sigma 18-50mm lens at 18mm. ISO 400. f/2.8 @70secs. 3sec light paint with hand held torch.

So what was the problem? I’ll give you the photographic answer first: Long exposures, tripod, de-powered fill flash and deep breaths. The problem is trying to get all red torches (and the rest!) turned off and everyone’s flashes to pause and everyone out the shot, or to stop moving about, or standing in the way or… you get the picture (pun intended). Setting up a shot in generous darkness is tricky, finicky to say the least and obviously takes a while. People don’t have the patience to wait when they feel they’re there to watch (which they are). The more I fussed the harder it became and the angrier I got. And this meant simply that I forgot to enjoy myself, I forgot to revel in the experience, the sights, the smells the sounds the privilege. I was fixated on what photographs I was missing. I should have just put my camera away and been a grateful observer. Because I didn’t, I didn’t get the pictures and I also didn’t get the experience. As the Shona in Zimbabwe sometimes say, “half a loaf is better than none”. 

The solution? Go turtle watching twice. Once with a group. Leave your camera at home and just soak it in. It’s a privilege. Second time round go on your own, or perhaps with a likeminded professional photo buddy. You can then be photographers, do the work you love to do, get the results you want and in so doing compliment and swell the experience you’ve already had.

Canon EOS 7D. Sigma 18-50mm lens. ISO 800. f/11 @ 81 secs. Light painted with handheld torch.

Thanda Lodge. May's wildlife workshop

For reasons obscure I didn't post images from this workshop that I ran in may this year. Surprising because we had some really great sightings and a really great bunch of volunteers. just a couple of catch up images from the trip.

Canon EOS 7D. Sigma 18-50mm @18mm. 20.0 sec @f/3.5. ISO 1600. Additional light provided by painting with an LED torch and a tungsten torch.

Canon EOS 7D. Canon EF 35-350mm @270mm. 1/750th sec @ f/5.6. ISO 400.

Canon EOS 7D. Canon EF 35-350mm @350mm. 1/500th sec @ f/5.6. ISO 200.

Canon EOS 7D. Canon EF 35-350mm @ 350mm. 1/500th sec @ f/11. ISO 400.

Canon EOS 7D. Sigma 18-50 @21mm. 1/90th sec @ f/4.5. ISO 400.And we have a hyena, a lion, two elephants and I don't know ... or impersonations thereof.

Bug-rific!

Further to my previous post about a visit to the depths of the Bulawayo Natural History Museum in Zimbabwe, I thought I'd post some of the images from the entomology section.

Stick Insect now called Ischnaphasma leopoldi (changed from Palophus leopoldi) Collected from Zambia in 1968. These stick insects are also common in Zimbabwe and measure about 40cm head to tail (excluding out stretched front legs).

At one point, if I remember correctly it was in the mid-1980s, the Museum, boasting one of the biggest collections of insects traded roughly a quarter of it for two carved soapstone birds recovered from Great Zimbabwe, an historic site thought to date back to the 11th century. Nevertheless, the trade still left the museum with an impressive and scientifically significant collection. 

A mantid (Pseudocreobotra wahlbergi) collected by a 'Mrs Noble of Salisbury'. Collected in Ramsgate, South Natal coast on 12 November 1979

Included in in the collection are a number of type specimens. Type specimens are those individual specimens from which further specie descriptions originate. Thus the type specimen is like an anchor or prototype that helps to centralise the defining features. Although the scientific name of every taxon is almost always based on one particular specimen, or in some cases specimens, it is important to note that there is no requirement for a "typical" individual to be used. Thus, the term 'name-bearing type' or onomatophore is sometimes used, to denote the fact that biological types do not neccessarily define "typical" individuals. Mimacraea neokoton is one such specimen, a type specimen collected in December 1955 from the Chirinda Forest, NE Zimbabwe.

Type specimen of Mimacraea neokoton from the Chirinda Forest in Zimbabwe

Goliath beetle (Goliathus meleagris). Collected in Elizabethville, Congo (Zaire) in January 1912.

 

Invasive birds in Bulawayo: Then and Now

I've always been fascinated by museums, their specimens and their collections. I've also always been fascinated by history and loss. So I was excited to spend a morning in the depths of the Natural History Museum, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, earlier in April this year.

As a young child (probably too young to be surrounded by so much death) I nagged my parents to take me to the museum far too frequently. As a teenager I'd wonder around imagining all the hands that the specimens had passed through and all the eyes that had seen the living animals before they were taxidermied. You'd think the exhibitions would have changed since then but they haven't. Not even since my earliest memories of the place in the early 1980's.

As an adult I now walked the corridors remembering, reminiscing and thinking about that child who was me. But that's a whole other story... .

What brought me into the catacombs of the museum was pure interest, but I did want to try photograph some of the early collected specimens. It is a sad reality that many of Africa's collections struggle against little to no government funding. This means the museums are poorly staffed and their operations, from administration to field trips, are severely hamstrung.

The following incident illustrates this point well, and also illustrates my fascination with history and loss, as alluded to above.

Walking into the ornithology section, order and meticulousness were not immediately apparent. Neither did they become so. On a side board, next to a plate of chicken bones and a mealie cob lay a great and dusty White Backed Vulture. It was thought to have been collected in the 1950s, but the tags had come off (or not been put back on) so who was to know now? Next to it lay a small brown wreck of a bird amongst its attendant debris and dust.  Soon after, or perhaps sometime during the first world war negotiations had begun between Germany and what was then Rhodesia. The cause of the collaboration was a species of bird recently arrived in Bulawayo bearing a striking resemblance to a native from Europe, the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus). I immediately recognised this specimen, despite its poor state, as a female of the species.

The bird's tags said it was collected in April 1913, almost 100 years ago to the day, and belonged to "Museum A. Koenig Nr." So what was it doing perishing in the corner of a crumbling museum? I thought I'd ask. The response was straight forward and matter of fact. The curator had no idea. Nothing else was offered. I asked where she had got it from and she said "Germany".  I needed to be more specific so I tried to ask the right question. "Why do you have it? She replied helpfully that it wasn't hers, it was the museum's, and that museums sometimes collected specimens for science." (Sigh!) "Where did you find it?" I asked, trying not to sound desperate. And then all was revealed. She was sweeping a few months back, she said, and had found it behind a cupboard. Clearly she didn't know what to do with it, which is why it still sat on the side board. I wondered how long it had lain there and if "Museum A. Koenig Nr." had a blank space in one of their 'Passer domesticus' drawers. Trying to find out was too much to bear so I moved off to another section.

On top of another set of collection drawers I noticed a strangely out of place specimen. It was out of place, not because it was a brilliant Norwegian Blue in a dusty African Museum that had seen its heyday, but because this bird was neat and new. It almost sparkled it was so new. I flinched as I recognised it as an Indian or Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis). These birds began to proliferate and spread in Africa, it is thought, after aviary birds escaped in 1902. Fast forward to about 1980-something, where, if you were attending the monthly Matabeleland Wildlife Society meeting, like I was, you would have heard the energetic young Doctor of ornithology, Kit Hustler warning "They're coming. Make no mistake they're coming!", a finger stabbing toward the audience in  emphasis.

And he was right because now in front of me lay one of the first recorded specimens from Zimbabwe, collected from Gwanda about 120kms south east of Bulawayo. Common Mynas have now been declared  by the IUCN Species Survival Commission as one of only three birds in the world's 100 worst invasive species. House Sparrows on the other hand have the honour of being the most widely distributed wild bird in the world.

One hundred years, almost to the day separated the deaths of these two specimens and I wondered. I wondered whose eyes had seen these two birds flapping about. I wondered whose hands they had passed through and where they might be in 100 years time. I wondered what titles their species would hold a hundred years from now....

Then I saw the chicken bones and wondered if it was chicken after all.

On the left, a House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) collected in April 1913 and used to help describe the new arrivals in Bulawayo at about the same time. On the right, another invasive species, the Indian or Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis) collected in November 2012. This is one of the first specimens to be collected in the Bulawayo area and continues to signify the ever expanding range of the species.

People Snapping Safaris

Okay, so this post is really a plea. We all know that photography is a voyeuristic passion. Oh, come on. Don't pretend you didn't know! With a camera to your eye (or worse, a picture in your hand or pixels on a screen) you can stare all you like. A safari often turns out to be something similar. I don't just mean looking and picturing wildlife. I'm talking about those guys ... those other people. Shhhh ....!

Sometimes you might find bouncing about on the back of a vehicle getting a little dull. Or maybe those lions have been lying on their backs for the last half an hour, barely moving, and you've already pushed your creativity by doing the paws in the air shot and then the abstracts. You've cleaned the grease off your LCD screen and you are wondering what the time is.

And then as if out of nowhere you see them, those other guys, and predator like you become attentive and alert. You're back to being a camera slinger now and they're the rustlers. We can break these new subjects into a couple of different categories.

1. The Guy Next To You. This is often the start. Its passive and its kinda what you do with your mates and your cell phone back home, so why not here, on safari and with your DSLR?

2. The Vehicle Next To You. Unlike walking with wildlife, if you're in a vehicle you are probably not the only group there. Thankfully there are some ethically sensitive operators who have a policy of limiting two vehicles to a sighting. So your eyes will stray and you will start to stare (how else are you going to see what equipment they are using, right?)

 (And if you haven't asked it already, you should be thinking ... Where is the driver? The answer? Behind the camera - and the rhino!)

 

 3. The Mirror Next to You. Mirrors make great framing elements for other subjects but it is often a little cliché. Look for other types of images and use mirrors to add that little personal touch (and I don't just mean as in yourself). Whenever I am about to embark on a game drive, I always check the mirrors and give then a little wipe. Your driver might think you're a little hygiene sensitive and thank you awkwardly. The mirrors are almost always dirty and a dirty mirror really doesn't help an image at all. 

4.The Other Guy In The Campsite Next To You. Its not always about being confined to a vehicle. In many of Africa's best parks, fences don't really come into the picture (so to speak!) So when you downloading and 'oooing' and 'ahhing' over your previous encounter, keep a weary eye. Elephants don't knock, why would they? You are sitting in their house. In the picture below, my brother contemplates the approach of tea time and the failed departure of an elephant!

5. Just The People Next To You. So we return, effortlessly it would seem to voyeurism. (Okay I exaggerate a little). Have you ever watched, say, two people argueing in the car next to you at a traffic light, or accross the street? You see them going at it, hands and all, but you can't hear a word. So you smile to your self and imagine the words, the cause and the probable outcome. This next image is a little like that because I shot it without including in my frame whatever they are looking at. You have to imagine what it might be. Out of the eight people, there are five different directions being looked in, and with varying levels of enthusiasm. So what are they looking at?
Imagine what it might be 'cos I'm not telling you!