This stunningly beautiful reptile finds its home in a resort in Aruba, a beautiful island in the Caribbean. Actually I was surprised and delighted to find that many iguanas use the resort pool, and surrounding display rocks for their own personal sunning spots. Even more relaxed than the tourists on vacation, these iguanas are so accustomed to having people around them, that they were most obliging to model for some close up portrait photos.
In Tasmania, like many places around the world, springtime means a lot of youngsters are finally out roaming around. Pademelons are marsupials (they have a pouch) which are particularly abundant in Tasmania, Australia. Baby pademelons are born at any time throughout the year, though higher numbers are born at the start of winter and spend the first 6 months in the warmth and safety of mums pouch.
This gorgeous wallaby was photographed in Tasmania, Australia. Native to Australia, these beautiful animals are in the same family as Kangaroos but were informally designated as wallabies due to their generally smaller size. Interestingly, there are a number of feral populations of wallabies in various places around the world including Hawaii, England and France because these bouncy critters are great at escaping from the zoo!
Even the largest and scariest of animals were once a cute little baby (except birds which definitely get cuter with age). This adorable baby crocodile is contently sunning itself in a river in Cairns, located in far north Queensland. As cute as this little guy may be, where there is a baby, there must be a mummy and a daddy. Cairns is home to saltwater crocodiles, currently the largest living reptiles, and the much larger and more aggressive cousin of the freshwater crocs. It made me very glad that I was in a boat on this river and not in a small canoe!
This small coral structure looks like a beautiful underwater castle. It is a hard coral which is home to millions of teeny tiny individual polyps in a castle constructed out of calcium carbonate. Other likely residents within this castle are single-celled algae. The algae use energy from the sun to make sugars and fats which they share with the coral allowing it to grow faster. The coral animals also make waste which feeds the algae. Together they make a very large and happy family of teeny residents in a beautiful castle. They even have a blue Christmas tree worm as a pet in the yard!
Not necessarily an image you want with your leisurely morning coffee whilst browsing your WordPress reader (sorry for that). This spider is just one of the species under the genus Argiope which are known for the striking colors on their abdomen. A. keyserlingi and A. aetherea are found in Australia and we call them St Andrews Cross spiders because they sit in the very center of the web with pairs of legs together in an X shape. They also often incorporate a much larger X across the web with silk (part of this can be seen in the bottom left of this photo). Rest assured, this is one of Australia’s friendly spiders which wont kill you 😉
I was lucky enough to encounter many Capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica. After watching them for some time, I was able to observe some of their relationships and behaviors. In the first image, I had clearly met one of the more senior and respected members of the group. This individual was happiest observing the humans that were observing him, and was quite content in sitting back and allowing the other younger capuchins to cause a raucous.
They often moved together as large family groups, and when they did it was like a tornado moving through the trees. At one point they needed to cross a road, and before letting the mums and bubs exit the safety of the trees, they sent out scouts (pictured in the second image) to make sure the coast was clear. Once the scouts gave the all clear, monkey after monkey came flying out of the trees to scurry across the road and back into the jungle. Some of their leaps from tree to tree were incredibly far and seemed very dangerous, but they were completely confident and surefooted.
The monkey pictured in this last photo was caught making quite a mess with the little fruits hanging from this palm tree. Surely a source of food for these cuties, but at times it looked like it was having more fun throwing the fruits to the ground than actually caring to eat them. I think their cute little faces easily fool humans into thinking they are very friendly, but in contrary they can be quite aggressive and territorial and wont hesitate to flash some pretty sharp canines if you get too close.
This one’s for you Walter… (for everyone else, if you want to see AMAZING dragonfly photos you should most definitely click here to visit Walter Sanfords blog). So here are my amateur attempts at photographing some dragonflies, and I’ve discovered that you need a lot of patience to do this. These first two are from Singapore, which were sitting in a giant lily pond in the national botanic gardens, a stunning place, especially if you like orchids.
The last one was from Costa Rica, and was continually circling a small pool of water outside my door. I stood for at least 45 minutes (felt like hours) in sweltering hot sun and ridiculous humidity, sweating like never before, all waiting for this dragonfly to land so I could take a damn photo. It actually did land every now and then, always in the same spot, but only for a second before taking off again and flying in circles. So I knew exactly where to point my camera and wait for the landing. Disappointingly, this was as close as I could get, otherwise it refused to land at all. So not a great photo, but I really tried!
I love this image of two butterflies because to me it looks as though the pattern and coloration on their wings is as if created with colored pencils. It has a delicate softness to it. Acrobatically mating upside down, together they join to create an interesting merging of patterns, both sides slightly different but equally beautiful.
I recently took a photo of this moth, plainly colored in tan, black and white. I found the geometric pattern on its wings quite strikingly symmetrical and streamlined that it reminded me of a fighter jet airplane. A very large and very beautiful winged creature.
Laura Lecce's art and photography 