Your Wildlife Stories

Otter, Ontario, Canada

2010-02-19T09:02:00.000-08:00

The next day after seeing a moose we rented a canoe again hoping to get some better shots of this huge mammal. Moose didn't show up but on our way back we spotted a family of otters. 2 adults and 2 small ones. We started following them but had hard time keeping up with their pace and frequent direction changes. I think they were using different defense techniques treating us as potential danger. At first they were all swimming together, a moment later they split up sending one adult one way and the other one along with the kids in the opposite direction. Amazing. They continued to communicate throughout the entire episode. Eventually we stopped following them as we didn't want to scare them off too much. It was a great experience to interact with these elusive animals.

Coati, Santa Elena, Costa Rica

2010-01-26T09:28:00.000-08:00

Coatimundi. I call them Costarican racoons. They're almost everywhere begging for food sniffing around and standing on their hind legs. We saw them on the roads, in the hotel yards and in the jungle. Very friendly creatures.

The one below was a daily visitor at the place we stayed at in Santa Elena. The place is called Las Orquideas. Very beatifully located right at the edge of a canyon. The owner was feeding this coati every morning with some fruit.

The Chamois (Kozice), Tatra Mountains, Poland

2010-01-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

Tatra Mountains is one of my favourite places in Poland. Those miniature Alpes are located in the southern part of the country. In the Tatra National Park you can encounter a few interesting mammal species including brown bear (very rare), groundhog (also rare), deer and the chamois ( known as "kozice" in Polish).

We spotted this small herd of chamois during our trip to "Czerwone Wierchy", a scenic trail connecting four peaks in the Western Tatras.

As the males don't live as part of the herd I believe we saw 4 females and their young. The animals were peacfeully grazing on some grass.

Moose, Ontario, Canada

2009-11-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

Karolina and I were spending a long weekend at our favourite Ontario getaway spot, Laurentian Lodge (by the way, this place is absolutely amazing, it's a long drive from Toronto but it's worth every single kilimotre and litre of gas!!).
One of our regular activities at the LL is canoing on Mikel Lake. In the morning when we were renting a canoe, Rob, a great guy who runs the place, mentioned that a moose had been seen in the area a few days ago. Hesitantly, I decided to take my Nikon D40 with us. It's not waterproof, so I was a bit concerned about getting it wet. It turned out to be a wise decision!
It was an absolutely windless, sunny day. The trees were throwing undisturbed reflections on the mirror of the lake. It was so quiet you could prefectly hear the brids chirping including a beatiful kingfisher that flew over our canoe. The only intruding noise was coming from our effortless paddling.

We are wildlife geeks so we were very excited about a possibility of seeing a moose especially that I've never seen one before!! (I know, I know... it's emberassing to live in Canada for almost 6 years and not to see a moose...).

Finally we got lucky. It was standing in a knee-high water at the other side of the lake. I took out our camera took some shots but when we started approaching her, she (it was a cow) tripped in a swampy water, quickly regained her balance and kept slowly, very distinctively, moving back towards the tree line where she eventually dissapeared. I wish we had a chance to get closer and get a better look but I'm still very happy I finally got to see a moose. I was most impressed by her size and graceful walk.

Quick Facts about Moose:

Type: Mammal

Diet: Herbivore

Average lifespan in the wild: 15 to 20 years

Size: Height at shoulder, 5 to 6.5 ft (1.5 to 2 m)

Weight: 1,800 lbs (820 kg)

You can read more about this animal here.

Great Blue Heron, Ontario, Canada

2009-11-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

These magnificent birds are plentiful in my neighbourhood in Ajax, Ontario. I can literally spot them almost everyday from my front porch. Even though they're so common I still tend to stop everytime I see one. The picture was taken at the Ajax waterfront.

Margay, Arenal, Costa Rica

2009-10-07T06:14:00.001-07:00

My wife and I stayed at the beautifully located Observatory Lodge at the bottom of the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. On our first morning we woke up around 5am to screams of howler monkeys and ventured into the jungle following one of the easily accessible trails leading to a waterfall. On our way back to the lodge a small wildcat jumped out of the bushes scaring us both. I yelled "Oh my God! Ocelot!!!!" (I actually yelled something else, a good old polish word starting with a "k"...). At first he just ran ahead of us and quickly dissapeared around a corner. We thought that was the last time we saw it but we were wrong. He turned around and slowly trotted back towards us. We totally didn't know what to expect. In one hand I had my camera ready to take pictures in the other I was holding my tripod for... defence:) just in case... The cat approached us, then quickly climbed on a tree, jumping from one branch to another like a monkey. He was unbelievably agile using his tail and strong, fatty front paws to keep his balance. It felt like he was showing off! Eventually he jumped off and ran back into thick bushes. We thought it was over and he was gone for good and we kept walking back to the lodge, still in awe... Suddenly we've heard a loud noise, something was running fast, very fast. Because of all the noise Karolina thought it was a jaguar :) But... it was our little fellow who longed for more company. Now, he got really close showing a lot of interest in us. However, at the same time he was acting like he didn't care about our presence...He wasn't looking at us at all chewing on some grass and playing with dried leaves. Finally we had to move on leaving the cat behind and got back to the lodge. We checked in the guide and realized that it wasn`t an ocelot but a margay, a small cat living in the canopy of Central and South American jungle.

Quick Facts about Margay:
Natural Habitat: rainforests of Central and South America
Size:
Food:
Trivia:

You can read more about this animal here.

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