TomKal foto

Tanzania XII / 17’ – introductory text – Kori bustard
I have listened to other peoples’ stories about Africa. It doesn’t matter if they were observers, nature photographers, or just tourists – they all had similar impressions of Africa, and their accounts from trips to that continent were also similar. A smile on one’s face, eyes wide open and a definitely positive change in one’s mood take place when stories on experiences in Africa are told one after another. What is there in Africa that it has such an influence on people, regardless of certain differences in leisure standards, to which Europeans are accustomed (roads, hotels)? Finally, with the end of the year 2017 I had an opportunity to check this out in Tanzania. And indeed, I managed to see such Africa, full of wild animals, without fences and enclosures which were present in RSA, where there were definitely fewer animals and the quality of pictures taken was certainly lower. This contact with nature was sometimes shockingly close and initially difficult to accept, especially during the night. The camping sites, which we used, weren’t fenced. It happened that at sunset, at a distance of several dozen meters, we could see giraffes. After dark even a hyena came close to our tent, at night zebras, buffalos and hippopotami grazed nearby, and a lion’s roar heard from afar was nearly a standard. It was really better not to leave the tent after dark, although reportedly nothing bad had ever happened to tourists. Based on my previous experience I was convinced about the advantages of hide photography over “approach” photography. Such awaiting the arrival of animals gives you a chance to take close-up pictures and it guarantees definitely better results. Africa is different in this regard. A hide is ok, but a four-wheeled, automobile-like.  The spaces within which animals move are hard to describe. You just have to drive and look for them on areas as large as thousands of square kilometers. Once you have already found animals, you usually won’t have problems with photographing them, but this pertains to mammals mainly. With birds, things look different sometimes. Some of them weren’t afraid of the car standing nearby, but some did not allow us to approach them at a “photograph-taking” distance. Obviously, such a mobile hide has some disadvantages and limitations too. Photographing small animals from not a far distance from the car does not give you reasons to be contented because of poor perspective. Ultimately, however, I managed to see so many wild animals and take so many interesting photos which probably would be possible nowhere outside Africa. Although I’ve uploaded a substantial number of pictures, I can assure you that they do not reflect the specific “African atmosphere”, which you can feel only when you are there yourself. Watching the great migration of mammals, I was wondering how to capture it, so that the pictures reflect those amazing impressions and feelings of the observation of hundreds, or actually thousands of animals dispersed on a boundless lowland, grassy territory – the savanna. The great migration pertains to about 2 million wildebeests, a million zebras and a few other species of antelopes. In search of food, the animals traverse several thousand kilometers a year. For this reason, the boundary between Kenia and Tanzania is only a line on the map. How to photograph it? Taking photos with short lenses brings poor results. Dispersed animals become just some unfocused spots due to undulation of hot air.  Taking pictures from a short distance enables you to capture just one, maybe a few animals, but this isn’t documenting the great migration. As is so often the case in life, there are such phenomena, which require more than just reading or listening about them or watching them – you must see them for yourself. For this reason, there won’t be many texts, accounts of this trip, although, I must admit, it was probably the best and most interesting trip of all the bird quests I had had around the world so far. More than a hundred of new bird galleries have been created and several dozen of  old galleries have been remodeled radically. After photographing 10% of the world’s population of birds, creating a gallery of merely documentary value is going to be carried out only in case of some really special species. My approach to nature photography has changed in this regard. In case of the photos from Tanzania I didn’t have any problems with it. There are very few species that I took pictures of and which will be merely archived or will remain just an observation. The quality of photos is really impressive when compared with poor achievements from RSA.
So much about the organizational part, and now, I’m traditionally starting from the bustard, as, if I managed to photograph any bustard species during the trip, the introductory text appears obviously next to them. During that trip I managed to take pictures of four bustard species and I’m going to upload voice recording to two bustard galleries. Now, I’ll tell you about the bustard itself, the greatest of the greatest…
Another bustard, the greatest of all, gets into my gallery. It is undoubtedly the tallest of bustards, its weight however, according to various sources, is similar to the weight of our male bustard (Otis tarda). My fascination with bustards doesn’t fade, what is more, after the encounters in Africa, captured in photos of subsequent four bustard species, it is growing even stronger, perhaps. Driving across a relatively flat terrain, I suddenly saw a kori bustard. As the neighborhood was said to be safe, with no animals which could threaten us, I got out of the car in order to have a better perspective and shorter distance to take a photo. The bustard kept a safe distance, but it did not fly away, and kept foraging, keeping its eye on me. My first photos of the kori bustard were taken, and they were not just documentary photos.  There were a few more encounters with this species, so I had plenty pictures to choose from while creating this gallery. The hardest thing was to capture them in flight. It is quite difficult to observe. They prefer to peacefully and proudly traverse the grassy spaces. Despite the fact that there are lots of species from this bird trip, to which I could add the “most” prefix, it is the kori bustard, the greatest of the bustard family in the world, however, to which the introductory text is ascribed. Speaking of other “most” galleries, the following are going to be created: the elephant – the heaviest land mammal, the cheetah, the fastest land mammal, the leopard, the most difficult to observe among the great cats of the African Big Five. Probably I could name a few other “most” species. The Kori Bustard is the national bird of Botswana.Traditionally, to each species from this trip an inventory of galleries is attached which were created or modified after the photo expedition to Tanzania. The inventory is a list of links, at the same time, so that you can quickly and easily see the whole beauty of the Tanzanian fauna and flora. The letters T and G in the particular species of the inventory mean that the gallery contains a text/information (T) or voice recording (G). I invite you to take a look.
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There were several encounters with Cori bustards. Photos have been added to the gallery introducing some variety. The bustards at the sight of the car never ran away, at most they slowly moved away from us. This is probably due to the respect for the law in Botswana. As the national bird of Botswana, it lived to see special regulations. It is punishable by 8 years in prison in Botswana for killing a Cori bustard. For these reasons, it is better to choose a smaller poultry, it will be safer and maybe even tastier... This law is also respected in national parks in places designated for "camping". Whenever we arrived at such a place we never found paper, cans or any plastics there. There is a fine of up to $1,000 for not cleaning up after one's "camping". In Europe that's not a small amount, and in Africa you could say it's a sanction not to be ignored. And that's a good thing. Everywhere is clean and people have habits of taking their garbage with them. Outside the larger metropolitan areas, Botswana, compared to other African countries, gives the impression of being uncluttered, clean, natural.