Categories
Moths and butterflies

Meal Moths

Being a keen baker, I keep flour and other grains for baking purposes in the kitchen. Problem is that the Meal Moths have found my stash and lay their eggs in the supplies and those eggs hatch out into little worms which eat the grains. Having eaten the grains they leave a powdery residue which is a bit of a problem. I curse them, but I must also admire their beauty.

A moth against a grey wall. It has dark brown and light brown patches separated by with borders.
Its abdomen is curved upwards.

For more details have a look at its Wikipedia page

Categories
Helicopters Photography Table Mountain

Fire on Table Mountain

A fire broke out on the front slopes of Table mountain.

A tree obscures the actual fire but smoke rises in front of Table Mountain

Fortunately the South Easter gale had subsided and they could bring the helicopters in.

A helicopter carrying a red water bucket.
Table Mountain is visible behind

The helicopters circled picking up water from a local reservoir

A helicopter against a blue sky carrying a red water bucket.
Categories
Bird Phptography Birding Western Cape

Little Stint

A Little Stint works the salt marshes in the West Coast National Park, South Africa.

A small wading bird with a brown brown back and white belly., black legs and a long straight beak.
green and yellow water weed are in the background. The foreground is pale brown.
Categories
Nature Photography

Bat Eared Foxes

We were privileged to see Bat Eared Foxes in the Mountain Zebra National Park. They use those big ears to detect insects which they then dig for in the dry sand.

A small grey/brown creature with black legs, dark eyes and eye stripes and large ears out of proportion to the creature. <It stands in front of a Sweet Thorn  tree
A small grey creature side on with black legs, dark eyes and eye stripes, and large ears out of proportion to the creature. It stands in arid grass
Categories
Astro-photography Astronomy Photography

Interrupted Star Photography

And now the story of a failed star shoot. We were in the Mountain Zebra National Park. It is a really great park. They have just brought lions in and according to the park staff the lions are “far over there” pointing towards Graaff Rienette.

We were in a fenced camp but worryingly we have seen buck inside the fences so we are not convinced that the fences are as secure as the staff say.

Anyway, at 2 AM I go outside to take photos of the stars because the skies are really quite beautiful and bright in the dry Karoo air.

My first shot and the focus is a bit off.

The milky way slides diagonally across the middle of the image with the Southern Cross (Cruxis) almost on the horizon
There are faint clouds visible on the horizon
A mountain slope with lights on it occupiesthe left bottom of the image

Taking the advice of a wise photographer, I switch to manual focus and attempt to get sharp focus on a distant street lamp.

A street lamp illuminating a tree. A few stars are vaguely discernatble.

Then I start a third photograph setting the timer to 65 seconds.

It is at 30 seconds that a lion roars. It takes about 5 seconds for me to reallise that what I had just heard was a lion, that it might be far away but I wasn’t going to take a chance of it not being in the camp, so I raced inside the chalet and slammed the door which results in a third image which is a nice blend of the stars and the inside of the chalet.

For some odd reason, I didn’t go out again. 😀

A darkened room, with curtains overlaid with stars and a long trail caused by the street lamp
Categories
Astro-photography Eclipse Moon Photography

Full Eclipse

In very bad conditions I photographed the recent full eclipse. There was lots of light pollution and a lot of aerosols so I was actually quite pleased with the results. I was using a high ISO setting so a lot of grain is visible.
Oh, and for those from the northern hemisphere, you will note that the mare appear to you inverted.

A partial eclipse just above the roof of a nearby building.
An almost fully eclipsed moon, a bright patch on top right of the moon
A full blood moon. Lots of grain because of low light conditions.

Categories
Astro-photography Bird Phptography Birding Photography Uncategorized

Photographs marking the day

A silhouette of a  leafless tree against a red evening sky with a bird perched on top of the tree also in silhouette.

A Sugarbird in the evening,

a bird perched on top of a tree
It has a grey head and belly, green wings, red on the tail and the lower beak.

A waxbill in the morning

white flowers with yellow stamens

Flowers at midday

stars in a dark sky with clouds and light on the far horizon

And the stars at night. Light pollution on the horizon.

Categories
AI Slop

This blog is for humans

With AI stealing everything from this website, the sentiments in the LocalGhost website ring true.
I put effort, time and care into my content only for it to be scraped by machines to make others look good and possibly even make money for them.

A photo of clouds lit by a setting sun. The image is dark with rippled water in the foreground, a mountain on the left and some cranes in the middle where the mountain slopes down almost to the water. The setting sun is not visible but yellow light illuminates the water and the clouds
Categories
Clouds Photography Sunset

Clouds

I enjoy photographing clouds.

Categories
Cape Town Photography Sunset

False Bay Sunset

Photo taken from Rooi Else across False Bay.
It is call False Bay because it sometimes fooled sailors of old looking for Table Bay.

A sunset photo with layers of cloud above mountains and the sea.
The entire image is shades ranging from red to purple.