Photo request

Hi all,

As some of you probably know by now, some colleagues and I have been working for a number of years on a field guide to the larger mammals of Tanzania, which will hopefully be published early next year. The book will include many features that I hope will be of use to the wildlife watching fraternity, including notes on where best to see each species, and lists for every National Park detailing how likely one is to see a particular species in that Park, in order to help people plan their mammal watching safaris better.

We are now in the final stages of selecting photographs for the book, and I’d like to ask if anyone on this forum can help provide some of the photos that we are still missing. Some of you have already been extremely helpful (Jon and Coke in particular), and I’m hoping that others of you might also be able to assist, in return for a free copy of the book.

The perfect picture is a side profile of the animal looking towards the camera or straight ahead, in low grass so you can see most or all of its legs, with little or no shadow on it, and with little or no vegetation masking the animal. Not as easy as you might think.

The species that I still need are as follows:

Cape hare from Serengeti or Masai Mara, particularly the short grass plains in southern Serengeti/Ndutu area. If you have any decent photo of a hare (Scrub hare included) from that area I’d be interested in seeing it, as these are really tricky species to identify, and I’m looking for the perfect photo that captures all of the key identification features so I can highlight them. If you have a photo of Scrub hare from central or northern Kenya (Samburu etc) that would also be useful.
Steenbok female from East Africa (the Southern African ssp have much larger ears)
Klipspringer female
Smiths Red rock hare
Cape Clawless otter
Spot necked otter
Dwarf mongoose troop on a termite mound
African palm civet side profile
Springhare
Subantarctic fur seal (bit of a stretch this one, but if anyone’s been to Antarctica or some of the islands off Chile you may have one in your collection).

We already have pictures for most of these species, but some are not very good, and the more we can choose from the better. If you can assist with any of these, can you please send me low resolution photos to the following email (cfoley at fastmail dot fm) – written in long-hand to try to circumvent the spammers. I will reply to all emails to let you know that I received the photos, so if by chance you don’t hear back from me within a couple of days, please send them to Jon who will forward them to me.

I’ll probably re-send this email a couple of times as its likely to get pushed down the page (and out of mind) by other entries. Apologies in advance for this.

Any assistance you can provide will be much appreciated.

Charles