Day 3: Morondava to Antananarivo

It was a long travel flight day.  We left our Heaven on Earth on the Morondava beach and flew to Antananarivo via 2 extra stops.  Five hours later we had a great lunch in Antananarivo, but struck out looking for black egrets in the rice fields.  The sun was wrong for city shots from the main hill, so we just got to the hotel for some Photoshop instruction and dinner.  Tomorrow we will explore the area while we wait for the rest of the group.  Can't wait for the real tour to start.

Day 4: Antananarivo

A.M.: Before we went to the bird park in the middle of town, we had chocolate croissants, mango juice, and cheese omelets —  breakfast of the gods!  There are hundreds of acres of wetlands where we photographed night herons, white faced whistling ducks, dimorphic egrets and a harrier of some kind that was hunting and diving into the flocks of herons and ducks.  That made for great flight photography!  It’s a “high mortality shoot”  as almost all of the photos will be tossed out…but the ones we keep will be fantastic!  Lots to learn about flight photography for the group.  We plan to go back this afternoon to the other side of the lagoon for evening light.  We had a fun time in the main square of town shopping for books and fabrics.  I think I may have the fabric that will be the downstairs curtains (after eight years).  Lunch was at another amazing restaurant called Villa Vanilla (famous for the Madagascar vanilla ice cream…for a reason).

Evening at the bird park was completely different.  Lynn found a malachite kingfisher on a great perch 15 feet from the bank.  He let us shoot for 12 minutes as he dove for fish and came back to the same branch to preen and eat.  The ducks were flying in huge flocks and gave us several passes for flock shots.  WOW.  The rest of the time we went against the sun and got beautiful back light on the white dimorphic egrets.  Back to the hotel for editing, supper and sleep.  The vleha playing trio was at dinner and sounded great.