I’ve just got back from a holiday visiting family in England, Jersey and France. The weather and time of year meant everyone’s gardens were in full bloom and the bird feeders were busy, so I took the opportunity to practice some garden wildlife photography.

After the photography workshop I took a few months ago, I’ve been trying to pay more attention to composition, depth of field, etc, to improve my skill level. This is especially challenging when it comes to wildlife photography – wild creatures don’t tend to sit around and wait while you try to get the best angle and compose the perfect shot!

The galleries below showcase my favourite bird and butterfly sets from the 1200+ photos I took over the past couple of weeks, and I hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to relax and enjoy them…

Click into each gallery to see the full-size photos.

Butterflies

Birds

I consider some of these photos to be among the best I’ve ever taken – do you agree? Even a humble house sparrow can be quite enchanting when posing for a photo.

Although the subject matter of these photos isn’t as exotic as my African photos, my safari experiences have changed me – these days, I’d much prefer to watch and photograph wild animals and birds in their natural habitats instead of caged animals in zoos.

I’ve really missed practicing this hobby – it’s so relaxing to get out into nature and watch and wait for something interesting to photograph! When I have my own garden again (we’re currently renting until our new house is built) I’m planning to make a native wildflower meadow so I can attract pollinators (birds, bees and butterflies) and other local wildlife to visit my back yard. Isn’t that a lovely idea?!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my photos, and that you’ll remember to take time to look out for your local wildlife too…

Last year we had our first safari trip to Kruger, and it was as amazing as you’d expect. We took two tours with experienced safari guides, and spent a day with friends who had a car. This year, for our second Kruger trip and as a finale to our African experience, we hired a car for a whole week so we could slow down and explore by ourselves.

With 7 days of venturing into the park with my rental car and camera, I ended up with about 6000 photos and some amazing memories. Hunting for wildlife ourselves was completely different from being driven around. Just stopping and sitting (safely inside the car!), you can wait and observe behaviours as the animals relax and accept you as a part of the scenery – it’s a much more intimate experience.

As this was my second safari trip, I tried to get some more candid shots this time around, and share some more unusual special moments. I’ve split them into 4 short galleries below – please click into any to see the full-size photos and read my captions.

Note: For the more typical safari experience and an introduction to Kruger, please check out my post from last year – I’ve tried not to replicate too much from there with this year’s photo selection!

Scenic shots

With this set, I’ve tried to give you some of the feeling of being out in the endless wild spaces of Kruger.

Behaviour

Animals going about the business of their daily lives – eating, greeting, fighting, playing…

Birds

A small selection of my favourite bird portraits from this trip (this section could have been many times longer!)

Animals

And we’ll finish with some of my favourite animal moments…

I wanted to select these photos for you while the experience was still fresh in my mind – it’s already starting to fade, but looking through all my photos has brought it right back again! I’m so thankful to have had these amazing wildlife experiences that are worlds away from anything I’ll see in Canada, and I’m glad I have my photos as a record of our adventures.

I hope these photos have given you a little taste of the magic of the wilds of Africa! Please leave me a comment if you’ve enjoyed them…

At the weekend Dave and I took a trip to Alpaca Loom, a local working fibre farm near Paarl, with a herd of hundreds of alpacas (and a few rogue llamas, camels, horses and donkeys in the mix too!)

We got to handfeed the beautiful alpacas and see all the adorable newborn crias (babies) playing. There’s nothing like looking into an alpaca’s huge dark eyes and feeling its hot breath on your hand as it delicately snuffles up grains with its soft mouth…

At the Alpaca Loom, they process the alpaca fibre from start to finish on site in the traditional way, from shearing, to hand-spinning the fibre into yarn, to weaving the yarn into fabric using floor and table looms.

Take a look at a few more of my photos in the gallery below:

I also couldn’t resist buying some (unprocessed) silky soft fine alpaca fleece for… spinning? needlefelting? art weaving? I’m not sure yet, but I’m looking forward to making something with this gorgeous fibre – you can definitely expect some alpaca-fibre craft posts from me in the coming months 🙂

And, if you’d like to make your own gorgeous Alpaca, try my bestselling Alpaca crochet pattern! (I made my dark brown alpaca with real alpaca yarn and it’s so soft and snuggly!)

I have lots of safari photos to share with you today, from our trip back in July. Of all my experiences in South Africa, this is the one I’d been most looking forward to; Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves in Africa and is as large as some European countries! In our short visit, we saw only a tiny fraction of the park and still it was more amazing than anything I could have imagined – we saw dozens of different animals and birds, including all of the Big Five and lots more.

Kruger is about 1800km (1100 miles) as the crow flies from Cape Town – South Africa is a big country!

I’ve taken quite a few of these selfies this year, with me looking dishevelled and slightly delirious at having such a wondrous wildlife experience:

Can you see the reason for my delight, over my shoulder? (Keep reading and you can share my excitement – I have close-up photos and even a little video to share with you…)

So now let’s move onto my proper photos; I’ve spent months trying to choose from over 3000 so I could show you a reasonable number! These galleries have left out a lot, but I hope they give you a taste of the real wild Africa. I’ve split the galleries so you can click into the groups you’re interested in, to see the full-size photos, and skip any you aren’t…

The natural world is amazing and varied, and there’s nothing like seeing parts of it first-hand, but I hope my photos will give you a small taste of that excitement! Every time I’m lucky enough to travel, it fills me with new inspiration and appreciation for nature.

Me with a green sea turtle – an overwhelming dream-come-true experience

I didn’t think I’d ever be able to top the thrill of seeing orangutans in their native environment of Borneo, but my sea turtle-spotting adventure in Hawaii last month may have just done it!

I took over 3000 photos on this trip and couldn’t force myself to narrow it down to just a dozen of the best. Instead, I’ve set up a few themed galleries in this post (scenery, turtles, lizards, misc wildlife) so you can enjoy any subjects that interest you without being bored by the rest 🙂

There’ll always be a special place in my heart for UK wildlife, and Britain in springtime is especially lovely. I’ve just got back from visiting my parents, and I thought I’d share a few British wildlife photos with you – a change of pace from my usual African pics!

Ahh, a glade of bluebells – the quintessential sign of spring in British woodlands:

My all-time favourite British bird, a happy robin:

A wild bunny in a field (straight out of Watership Down):

A cheeky wood pigeon gobbling up pretty cherry blossoms:

And, best of all – my first ever photo of a red squirrel! I just love their gorgeous colouring and tufted ears. (This is a wild squirrel, by the way – it was just eating nuts from a squirrel feeder.)

Whenever I post photos of South African wildlife, I get comments saying “you’re so lucky; there’s no interesting wildlife where I live”. I’d like to dispute that – everywhere I’ve lived (various places in the UK, three cities in Canada, and of course here in Cape Town) I’ve enjoyed photographing my local wildlife. It may not always be as ‘exciting’ as zebras and flamingos, but, as I hope you can see from the above photos, that doesn’t make them any less interesting, or enjoyable to watch out for. Even in cities, there are parks and wilder areas, and venturing out into the local countryside is a great way to look for photo opportunities when you have time (and, as an added bonus, getting out into nature is good for your physical and mental health too).

If you just take the time to look, I bet there are always some birds or animals you could try to spot and/or photograph fairly close to home…

I hope you’ve enjoyed my photos, and that this post will inspire you to keep your eyes open and enjoy the wildlife that lives on your doorstep 🙂

Just before Christmas, Dave spent a week working at one of the big telescopes at Sutherland, 400km from Cape Town. I decided to take a road trip to meet him out there and bring him home for Christmas. I thought you might like to see more of the South African landscape and wildlife, so I documented what I could for you to enjoy too!

The drive was lovely and I saw some amazing animals along the way – baboons, pelicans, blue cranes, lizards, and various birds of prey and brightly-coloured songbirds – but it’s not easy to take photos of moving targets while driving! By the time I’d stopped the car (when I could), the wildlife had run or flown away. In fact, the only animal I managed to photograph en route was a slow-moving baby tortoise…  But the scenery is pretty spectacular too, and I did get some nice wildlife pics once I reached the observatory.

This doesn’t look like a massive road trip on the scale of the size of the whole country, but it goes through farmland, mountains, and semi-desert, and both the scenery and weather change completely as you go.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave and I had the privilege of going on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town. We’ve been members of the aquarium since we moved to South Africa, as it’s not only one of the top tourist attractions in Cape Town, but also plays a valuable role in marine conservation, research and education.