Reader Stephen Barnard has again favored us with some bird photos, but is scrupulously honest about them:
Photographers call this kind of shot “Spray and pray” — multiple shots at a high frequency, hoping that one will be good. I’m amused when someone comments, “Good timing.” It’s not easy to lock on to the focus.
Red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus):
After I expressed my wish to pet a big cat, two readers wrote in recounting their own experiences doing so, and telling me how to do it. I’m grateful for this, but of course would like reassurance that these facilities are on the up-and-up, that the animals aren’t raised for hunting, are taken good care of, and so on. Lion belly rubs!
Here is some information and a photo sent by reader Colin:
I noticed that petting lion cubs is very high up on your bucket list. I know where you can make this happen, as I made it happen a few months ago. I was doing field work in South Africa, in the Kalahari dessert. We stayed in a town called Kimberley. Near there was a place called the Felidae Centre, where they keep lions and other animals to prevent them from Can Hunting (a horrible practice where rich foreigners buy cubs, bottle feed them, then return years later to shoot them). For a very small fee ($10) you get to partake in a tour of the facility. One of the first things you get to do is per a caracal, cheetah, and lion cub! It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life, and if you want to knock this off your bucket list, I can’t recommend this place enough. I have attached photographic proof of my claims!
And from reader Joe Dickenson:
Responding to your recent post about lion cubs, here are some shots from a “Walk With the Lions” at a private game reserve in Zimbabwe near Victoria Falls. These supposedly are orphaned cubs being rehabilitated. That’s me in the first photo. And, as a bonus, you can visit the falls.
This looks a bit dangerous to me, for those “cubs” are big.
If you ever come to South Africa, there is a place just outside Johannesburg where you can go for a stroll with 3 elephants, followed by a chance to fluff some young lions.
In various places around South Africa, I have fluffed a cheetah, a lion cub, a tiger cub and been sprayed by a leopard…
Jerry, you might (stress on might) be able to get your wish a bit closer to home. check this place out, it’s just (for a certain value of just) over the border in Canada.
http://www.bearcreeksanctuary.com/tours.htm
I went to the same facility as Joe Dickenson, about eight years ago, and can attest that it seems pretty legitimate. The fact that the ‘cubs’ are so big is (IMO) a good indication of this. They don’t just buy babies for foreigners to pet and then pass them to another facility when they get too big to be cute – they have what they have because that’s what has been brought to them for rehabilitation, and you either take it or leave it.
These are big cubs, but they are still just kittehs, and I am sure it is supervised. Also, as you know being with a cat when it is calm and semi-sleepy (likely in daytime) and wild-eyed and predatory (likely at night)can be pretty easily assessed before contact.
It was supervised, very closely. You cannot see the keepers in the photos but they were no more than about 10 feet away. Also the cubs’ day follows a general routine, so both keepers and cubs are comfortable with visitors acting certain ways at certain times.
Nevertheless, when the cubs are cranky, their needs rule the day. When I went, the people who had gone the day before had not got to pet them. Also several people in my group did not get to hold the lion’s tail (literally, I did this) while we went walking with them, because the cubs saw some buffalo and took off halfway through our walk.
Also, I suppose how the cub will communicate will be similar enough to our domestic cats, that one can get a pretty good reading about their attitude toward strangers. In the pictures above, none of them are looking directly at the human next to them. That means complete acceptance. When they give you a glance, look away, rotate their ears away, those are communication signals that they accept you and I suppose are calm (not vigorously playful) right now. A slow half blink of the eyes is also a good sign, but I do not know if lions do that.
I hope Jerry goes!
I am feeling a bit envious.
Having done it, I’d say that a photo safari to Africa, with the bells and whistles, should be on everyone’s bucket list.
It is worth bearing in mind though that there are places where tourists can get up close and personal with big cats where the cats are simply being exploited as a money making concern and there is no associated benefit in terms of conservation or animal welfare. JAC is right to ask for all those assurances. Choose carefully!
See http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/tiger-temple013.html#cr
😀 that last picture!
Belly rubs :3
What sort of psychopath bottle feeds a baby lion then returns to shoot it? Rich psychopaths I suppose – the worst kind.
Nice Stephan – I rely solely on the several shot approach. 🙂
Definitely some good birdy photos.
Any idea what aperture was being used? It looks to be pretty wide so I bow to Stephen Barnard’s focussing skills!
All three were at f/11. The duck was at 700mm hand held and the blackbirds at 100mm with a tripod (full frame sensor).
The AI Servo autofocus mode is essential for getting birds-in-flight shots like the duck. Once you achieve focus the camera “locks on” to the object. It’s almost like magic. The hard part is getting the initial focus and tracking the bird.
Al servo is a hummingbird photographer’s best friend. They are dirty little things always moving closer and farther away.
Damn Stephen, looking at your photos makes me want to throw caution to the wind and run out and buy that Nikon d5200 that is on my wish list. Whatever the method that duck pic is very nice, but I particularly like the 1st Blackbird pic. The posture of the bird, and how fierce it looks as it stares right into your camera lens. Great shot.
Regarding large cats, I also would count it high on my list of finest life experiences to have a close personal few moments with a big cat. A couple of weeks ago, I can’t remember off hand what exactly the documentary was about or what network it aired on, I was busy cooking and cleaning, I watched an amazing big cat encounter. A young woman who had been studying a pair of lions for some time introduced the host of the show to them. The young woman researcher was able to cuddle, play, hug and lay on these young lions and they seemed to genuinely enjoy her. But she was very careful to instruct the host on precisely how to behave, and she worked constantly with gestures and touches to keep the lions in check. The host asked the researcher if she would be able to interact with the lions if the researcher were not there. The researcher said something like “No way, not a chance!”
That first picture is about the size of the cub I held in a pet store. I mostly remember the paws, they were just so large that’s all I could look at. I now wonder what the story was behind those pet store lions, where they came from and where they were going. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be a great story, I’m sure.
I stumbled into that opportunity because it was at the pet store where I bought fish and I just happened to be there the day they had a pair of lion cubs there. They weren’t charging anything to hold them. It was just a way to promote the store I suppose.
The Victoria Falls place mentioned by Joe Dickenson must have been around for a while, because my daughter Frances did a “walk with the lions” in March 2008. Here’s her story, with a photo of her with two 13-month-old cubs: http://wheresfrances.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-photos-of-victoria-falls-zimbabwe.html
Those red-winged blackbirds look fantastic. I bet they hardly ever turn man-eater, too.
I love the blackbirds emerging from the spaceship! So that’s where they come from! And that lady duck taking to the air is, of course, why you’ve got the 5DIII behind the Great White.
Those lions are all clearly in lazy naptime / cuddle mode. I think the proper action to take is to lay down in the middle, find a suitable torso or limb for a pillow, and join the nap.
b&
I’m so disappointed to see this endorsement of something that, in all honesty, is one of the biggest ways the canned hunting industry is supplied in Africa. Tourists clamor to take care of and touch and photograph baby wild cats and that’s exactly what the unscrupulous breeders depend upon. There are fewer than 4000 lions left in the ’wild’ in South Africa, but more than 8,000 in captivity, being bred for these “pay to play” “conservation” schemes but truthfully they’ll end up killed by the bullet or the arrow. Please, please take a moment to educate yourselves before it’s too late to stop this atrocity. Don’t be duped, don’t support abuse. Thank you for caring. http://www.cannedlion.org/
Jerry did not endorse “canned lions”. He said “but of course would like reassurance that these facilities are on the up-and-up”.
I find big game commercial hunting as repellent as you do. But I also am a little skeptical of groups that bemoan the fact that there are less than 4000 lions left in the wild – I assume the wild means places like legitimate nature reserves – because they are hardly likely to be left to roam freely across a fairly developed country; and then express moral outrage and indignation that there are captivity programs breeding them.
If organisations claim to be conservation programs but are little more than hunting safari clubs, then I wholeheartedly agree they deserve to be condemned.
But the fact that a reserve is breeding a species which has dwindling numbers in the wild does not automatically make them suspect.
A quick googling gives me the answer of 40,000 wild lions total, and the Vic Falls facility is at the northern tip of Zimbabwe, hundreds of miles north of SA.
I do very much empathize with the cause of reducing bad forms of eco tourism, but your post above is somewhat misleading in how it portays the situation of lions.
She wrote “in South Africa”, so I’d give her a break.