Our goal of shooting dancing lemurs was foiled by a cold morning. The sifakas stayed up in the treetops, trying to stay warm in the sun. We followed them through groves of fruit trees as they fed, played and leapt from tree to tree. We found an open space where the lemurs had to jump 20 feet of clear space to the next tree. Here we used some of the skills we had practiced earlier in the trip when we shot the flying lemurs. This was more challenging because it was difficult to judge when a lemur would launch into space, but we did get some shots of airborne sifakas.

From there we went to the gallery forest where huge Madagascar fruit bats roost. Hundreds of these flying mammals hung in a colony and flew through the forest canopy, making a deafening racket the whole time. The toughest thing was to find a bat that was awake while in a fully-shaded area. Any sunlight filtering through created awful white spots in the background and on the bat. The best shots had bats stretching wings or yawning.

We took a ride to a different area of the spiny forest for our afternoon shoot. The overlook view of the forest in the afternoon light gave us a chance to take photos that can later be assembled into large panoramas. We struck out finding mouse lemurs and owls but when we got back to where the bus was parked at the edge of a sisal field we saw six or seven ring-tailed lemurs eating the 20 foot tall flower stalks. They clung to the stalks and chewed through the stalk until it toppled over. The scene was perfect. A beautiful subject in a great setting, engaged in an intriguing behavior, in late afternoon light…amazing!

After supper our local guide, Bdenoit, brought us out behind the bungalows to show us a White-browed Hawk-owl waiting by a path light for insects. We had nice chances to use flash to make night shots. I thought I would try some of the high ISO setting on the D4. Using the H2 (2 stops past the 16,000 ISO stop) and handholding the 600mm lens, I was able to make a photo using only the glow of the path light. The clarity, sharpness, color and lack of noise was astounding. I didn’t even have to get rid of any red eye either.

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