My Own Animal Garden

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.I photographed this South American Coati from inside my kitchen. It was about 6 feet away and the picture was taken with a 100 mm lens.
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009

From my work desk, where I spend a great deal of my time facing the computer when I’m not in the field, I can see almost the entire garden and backyard of my house. While I carry on building my new website, reply to e-mails, edit pictures and perform other tasks, I am able to watch the 24 bird species who already came to feed on the seeds, fruit remains and water that we put out for them on a daily basis. In total, we have already identified 77 species that come to our house or sing nearby. There are macaws, toucans, potoos, owls, parrots, tanagers, woodpeckers. If we add up all species of the neighborhood, the number goes to 113. But here we have much more than birds.

A Wagler's Snake, one of the serpents that have already visited us
in our backyard - and even showed its tongue to the house’s owner.
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009

The Tegu Lizard, three feet of length, comes crawling quietly through the lawn, sort of hidden by the shade of the trees. Much to our surprise and general perplexity for our cats, without ceremony he climbs up a step and enters our kitchen searching for a snack, some cat food scraps. I try to get up unnoticed to grab my camera and film the scene. I fail, lizard gets scared and rushes out through the door, one of our cats raises its hair watching everything but not understanding anything. Minutes later, there is our Tegu again cooling off inside the clay bowl that we use to provide water for the animals. But he is a bit too long for that container, so that his belly is submerged but there is a lot of head and tail left to the sides. Again, he is faster than me and goes away before I manage to take a picture…

So far, the only picture that we managed to take of the intruder lizard :-)
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009

Some months ago we had a Giant Anteater walk past the backyard fence, at 3 PM, less than 30 feet from where I sit to work. Weeks later came the Southern Tamandua, caught in action crawling under our front gate as our car headlights gave him away. Didn’t even get scared, went into the garden and calmly climbed up a tree. Three agoutis are always around (a mother and two young that we have been watching since they were babies), as well as the coatis who every now and then pay us a visit. Completing the team we have the harmless Parrot Snake that showed up one day inside our toilet bowl and the frogs that croak all around the house. Therefore, besides birds we have accounted for 11 species of mammals and 9 reptiles around here. Our cats seem used to it and are resigned of having to share their space with so many different critters.

Southern Tamandua caught red handed upon
breaking into our garden through the front gate.
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009

No, we do not live in a remote countryside ranch. We are just one mile away from downtown Bonito, in one of the remaining forest and savanna fragments that surround the city. You can also have an animal friendly garden or porch, take some time to search the subject on the internet. The pleasure of spending your days among wildlife is simply beyond description!

The garden that makes animals happy.
Click here for a bird’s eye view of us!
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009
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The Pantanal Rules!!!

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.A Southern Tamandua goes for a stroll
in the Pantanal with its baby
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009

“There’s a Southern Tamandua with its baby in front of the lodge!”, our guide said upon breaking into the room and interrupting the slideshow that one of our clients, also a professional photographer, was presenting. No one seemed to be annoyed by the sudden intervention – after all, the slides could always be resumed afterwards. But tamandua and baby, no way.

We went out to the garden and there they were, demonstrating much less worries than one could suppose from an animal that suddenly finds itself surrounded by a crowd of cameras and flashes. Everybody took some pictures and decided to go back to the room – except for Kelly, Mariana, Mike, our guide Fabiano and myself, still flabbergasted with the rare scene. All satisfied, we decided to let those critters follow on alone. Little we knew about what was yet to come…

After they had gone for about 100 feet, a super curious Crab-eating Fox comes and seems to be a little too interested on that pair of ant eaters. We quickly understood what was going on: the baby, which looked more like a stuffed toy, was about to become dinner. We left our biological purism aside and decided that there was a need to intercede: we walked towards the trio, scaring the fox away, and joined the family until the nearest tree, where they would be in safety. And that is how mother tamandua got herself a human escort for the next 200 yards and 10 minutes until they reached a safe spot. I’m really sorry, Mr. Fox, but tonight you will have to look for food elsewhere. Mision accomplished, back to Kelly’s slides!

The cute little fox almost had its night of big bad wolf!
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009

I don’t know of any area where scenes like that are so possible and almost trivial. The fact only came to confirm the feeling that I had some days ago: that the Pantanal is for me the best place in the world to see and photograph wildlife, nature, landscapes, local culture and many other things. Each day I understand that this was the main reason for which we decided to come back and live in this region after almost two years in São Paulo.

Want to check it out? So be welcome to Fotograma’s new Month’s Gallery with a selection of 20 pictures that I took during these winter months in three Brazilian biomes where I have been: Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal.

To see the images, click here here and choose 08.2009 gallery. If you experience any difficulties, please try this alternative link. Have a nice virtual trip!


A Giant Anteater having a chat with a Red-legged Seriema!
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2009

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The Speed of Things...

Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2008

Some firsthand thoughts that I had today about photography in the digital age.

It all started last Monday, when we met some college teachers from Rio de Janeiro that we had met in the Pantanal during one of their field excursions, back in 2004. After some chatting, we decided to take a group picture and someone made the comment about not having seen any pictures from that trip. Only then we remembered that, in those days, very few people in Brazil had digital equipment, and cell phones with cameras were a thing of the future. Then I remembered that 2004 was the year when I bought my very first digital camera, a Canon EOS 10D.

Cut to yesterday, when I went to take photos of a local hotel that I had already photographed in 2002. I have just downloaded the files from my memory cards to the computer: 227 images, considering that I haven’t yet photographed the rooms (which means that I’ll easily go over 300 shots). On those photo sessions seven years ago, all I used were no more than two rolls of film, or 72 pictures...

Finally, every now and then I go over my 10 memory cards just to make sure that no image was left behind without being saved into the computer. This afternoon I found a bunch of unpretentious photos that I took about two weeks ago. My sensation was the same as if I was looking at old pictures that remained forgotten in some picture album, and that I didn’t even remember about.

Definitely, things are really changing in this photographic world...

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