Continuing my photoblog about my first-ever safari with my 4-year-old daughter. We left our base camp at Skukuza in Kruger national park after 3 days and headed west to Pretoriuskop, a camp I’ve stayed at before and always seems to have very different sightings. It has lower big game densities and more of the unusual species tend to be seen.
Read MoreKruger National Park with my daughter - Skukuza section
For most of my adult life, even before I had a child, I have daydreamed about the moment I take my kids on a wildlife holiday. Well in August 2022 that dream became a reality as I took my 4-year-old girl to Kruger National Park, South Africa on her first safari, just me and her! It was a whole different experience to going there with friends or guests.
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Iberian Lynx - A truly remarkable sighting in Doñana, Spain.
Last January I went on a mission to Doñana National Park in Spain with a group of 7 friends. The main aim of the trip was to see the Iberian Lynx, as well as enjoy the wintering birds of the legendary Coto Doñana National Park
Read MoreSnettisham High Tide Roost - September 2020
My last blog about Snettisham was the most successful photo blog I have ever written in terms of views and traffic (read it here if you have not already read it). I am not entirely sure why, but I think the main reason is that Snettisham was in the mainstream news recently due to the record numbers of Red Knot gathering off The Wash.
Read MoreFlamborough Head
Seabird Photography on the Yorkshire Coast in Summer
Myself and my friend Chris Armitage decided to have a full weekends birding in Yorkshire, with the main aim of going to Wykeham Forest for the Honey Buzzards and Bempton Cliffs for the seabird colonies
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Vultures of The Pyrenees
Ever since I first witnessed the Bearded Vulture on a David Attenborough documentary, many moons ago, I have been fascinated by them. I remember my thoughts when I first watched them on TV, and thinking what? A bird that lives off bones? How can this be, and how have I not heard of them before?
Read MoreSnettisham Wader Spectacular - a technical view
For this blog entry I am going to talk about my wildlife photography technique and my thought process behind how I got the images and videos featured in this post. Two of the photos have been shortlisted for Bird Photographer of the Year 2020 which I am very happy about so I thought I would share how I went about getting the images, with what settings I used and with my own critique from the beneficial view of hindsight.
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Kruger Lion Kill
This is an old story and video of mine from back in 2012, but a mega one, and one that doesn’t feature on my site, so here it is.
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Coati
Costa Rica 2019 - Braulio Carrillo
This is my final photo blog entry for our wildlife tour of Costa Rica at the back end of 2019. Our time was up at Tortuguero National park and we needed to get a boat back to civilisation, and then start our journey inland back to the capital, San Jose. Jesse, our super guide, had a nice little stop off planned at a place called Donde Cope, half way to our next lodge which was called Tapirus Lodge, in Braulio Carrilllo national park
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Costa Rica 2019 - Tortuguero
Day 10 and we were up with the sparrows, armed with a boxed breakfast, ready for the long journey over to the Caribbean coast, with Tortuguero the destination. It’s always interesting seeing how the country changes from one coast to the next, whilst driving up and over the central spine of mountains. In Costa Rica, all the different altitudes and slopes creates lots of different habitats and micro-climates, meaning there are different pockets of wildlife to be seen, with each area bringing their own speciality species, adding to the biodiversity.
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Costa Rica 2019 - The Highlands
Continuing with my photo diary of our journey through Costa Rica, it was now day 8 and the next stop was the highlands of Costa Rica, and the beautiful valley of San Gerardo de Dota, with the main aim of seeing the Reslendent Quetzal, a very spectacular Trogon found in the could forests. On route we had 2 stops, one for this absolute beauty of a Northern Tamandua, which Jessy expertly spotted near the side of the road.
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Costa Rica 2019 - The Pacific Coast
We were now on day 4 of our tour of Costa Rica, and we were on the road again, this time down the pacific coast to our next hotel, Crystal Ballena, a beautiful hotel near Uvita with great birding. We broke up the journey with a stop at Quepos for lunch and a brief spell on the beaches of Manuel Antonio.
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View from Arenal
Costa Rica 2019 - Arenal Observatory Lodge
At the beginning of November I organised another tour of Costa Rica. This time it wasn’t strictly wildlife or birding, it also included adventure and a bit of general tourism, but as always with Costa Rica, it was jam packed with wildlife! There is no escaping nature in this country, there is something to see around every corner.
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A days birding with Steve Duffield on the Outer Hebrides
In late May I decided to go to an area of the country that I have never been to before, and one that keeps coming up in conversations as one of the best wildlife areas we have in the UK, The Outer Hebrides
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Turkey: Birding Cimikoy Meadows near Akseki
The next birding area I visited whilst in Turkey was Cimikoy Meadows, up in the mountains near the town of Akseki. This was a notably different environment; high altitude, colder, mountainous and a lot less people.
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Barred Warbler, Side Ancient Ruins
Turkey: Birding around Side Ancient Ruins, Antalya
If you have read my previous few blogs, I have been birding in Turkey recently, and we were staying around Side, near Manavgat in Antalya. I read a few trip reports online that were raving about ‘Side ancient ruins’, which is quite a large expanse of Roman ruins throughout the historic town centre of Side.
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Turkey: Birding around Manavgat, Antalya
My last blog post talks about finding the Brown Fish Owl in Turkey. This post will focus on everything else I saw whilst in Turkey, which was quite a lot! I didn’t even scratch the surface of birding in Turkey, and saw some pretty special birds. I mean, I bet I did’t even cover 0.5% of the land surface of Turkey.
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Turkey: Photographing the Rare Brown Fish Owl
After hearing from friends that one of the rarest owls in the Western Palearctic was relatively easy to see in Southern Turkey, I decided to plan a trip over there with my family. My girlfriend is not a birder and my baby definitely isn’t (yet), so I booked us into a nice resort in Side, Antalya, which is within reach of the location of the owls, and is a nice place for them to stay while I slope off in the early mornings.
Read MoreCattle egrets, La Janda, Martin Loftus
Raptor Migration in Tarifa, Spain
Fresh back from a great 3 night birding trip to Southern Spain with mixed emotions. Happy that we saw a great suite of some top quality birds, but angry and sad as we were the victims of a robbery, and I’ve had all my camera gear stolen. Most photos in this blog are by my friends Martin Loftus and Dennis Atherton, who were with me on the trip.
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Re-Brand
Earlier this year I decided to have a rebrand, and change the name of my organisation from Trek-Eco Adventures to JK Wild Images. The reason for this was primarily to have a more personable approach. We felt that Trek Eco-Adventures sounded a bit too corporate, and after all, we are a small company that provides a much more personal service when it comes to wildlife tours, with a lot more attention to detail.
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