Best of 2014

 

In 2014, I had an amazing wildlife year of lions, whales, snowy owls and this brave little tusker who is pretending to defend his family from marauding lions. It was a year of travel worthy of Art Wolfe, from Samburu and the Maasai Mara in Kenya to Cape Cod's famed Stellwagen Bank to the rainforests of Belize and the tropical reefs off Honduras.

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The winter highlight was an irruption of snowy owls that brought at least three birds to Cape May County. I spent every free minute looking for owls. I found this one on a snow-draped beach in Stone Harbor.

A southern stingray banks over a sandbar off Grand Cayman. 

The snowy owls shared the beach at Stone Harbor Point with a resident pair of peregrine falcons. Peregrines are not afraid of people, but you have to be respectful around them. It's pointless trying to sneak up on them. So when you want to get a little closer, you make it obvious and approach at an angle like an orbiting moon gradually getting closer. Using this technique, I was able to watch the larger female boot her mate off a favorite piece of driftwood.

In the spring of 2014, I visited the Stellwagen Bank off Cape Cod. It's a marine sanctuary that draws whales by the hundreds each spring. Here a famous whale nicknamed Nile prepares to dive.

A black howler monkey roars in the treetops of Belize. Howler monkeys are among the loudest animals on Earth. Their roars can be heard more than 2 miles away. You could feel it in your chest.

I saw lions every day of my trip to Kenya, where we visited three parks. A lioness takes shelter from biting flies in a bush on the Maasai Mara. I like the contrast of the green leaves on her tawny coat.

A big male lion makes himself comfortable in a tree fort where he is safer from biting flies at Lake Nakuru.

Honeymooning lions spend time alone from the pride on the Maasai Mara. They seem pretty happy together.

The lions in Samburu were the biggest I ever saw.

Alarmed giraffes pointed the way to this lioness and her sister, hunting along the Ewaso Ng'iro River. 

Samburu has many endemic species found nowhere else, including these Grevy's zebras with their extra-skinny stripes.

Oryx are another common antelope found in the desert scrub of Samburu. What beauties!

Samburu is home to desert warthogs, which have unique facial features compared to common warthogs.

A plains zebra charges across a wetland at Lake Nakuru.

A cloud of biting flies tormented an enormous Cape buffalo bull at Lake Nakuru.

Sharp acacia thorns and the iconic animal that somehow eats around them.

The Maasai giraffe is the largest of the four (or is it six?) species of giraffes found in Africa. This big male surely is among the tallest, towering more than 17 feet above the grassy Mara.

A leopard in Samburu takes shelter in a thorn tree as lions try to bully her on the ground. The leopard could only bide her time until the lions got bored. Only her wide eyes betray her alarm. Leopards internalize even their panic attacks. This was my favorite photo of 2014 and could be my favorite wildlife encounter of all time.