March 25, 2011
Temminck's Courser in Mountain Zebra National Park, South Africa

On our second full day in Mountain Zebra National Park, South Africa, we photographed more mountain zebra, black gnu, blesbok, and common ostrich. We also stopped to photograph a Cape ground squirrel and saw a yellow mongoose nearby that was fairly cooperative. My favorite image of the day is of a Temminck's courser. We photographed it right by the side of the road for a while and got some good images, then I decided to try something different than photographing it from the car. While still in a good position to photograph it, I slowly opened the door of the car, put my beanbag down on the ground, then got out of the car and photographed it from ground level. What a difference the lower perspective made! While the images from the car window were nice, the extremely blurred distant background afforded by photographing near ground level really makes the bird stand out.