Best Photos of 2012

I like to review my photos at the end of each year and identify which ones really stand out as representative of where we've been and what we've done. I'm not a professional photographer by any means, so forgive any inadequacies you might note. It's hard sometimes to compare one photo subject to another because a fantastic flower shot doesn't usually compete with a koala or a mountain view. So I've put them into categories and tried to come up with the best photos of 2012 along with some criteria for choosing them. I'd love your input. Do any really strike your fancy? Which is your favorite? In the animal category, I had a tough time choosing one and since I'm doing the choosing, I chose two. The reason for the difficulty is that there are so many new animals here in Australia from which to choose. But I also got a few good shots of American animals while we were back in the USA last summer.

So...my Australian animal is the iconic koala. Chosen because this koala was photographed in the wild on Raymond Island, Victoria. He's cute and unlike most of the koalas we saw there, he was awake and his eyes were open.

Back in America, I chose another icon...the American bison, usually referred to as a buffalo. This photo was taken at Yellowstone National Park and represents some of the best natural beauty America has to offer. We visited over 30+ national parks and monuments this past year and each had something special and unique to offer. There were mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the running along with echidnas and Tasmanian devils, but the quality of those photos wasn't as good as the one I chose.

In the insect category...yes, there is an insect category … I've chosen two also. The dragonfly shot was taken in the Clark County Wetlands Park in Las Vegas. It's clean and crisp and shows off the insect's gossamer wings to good advantage.

The reason for two insect shots is that I just can't ignore butterflies. They're too beautiful, too elegant and too fragile to ignore. This Boisval blue butterfly was fluttering around the flowers near Custer's grave at Little Bighorn in Montana. The detail is crisp and the butterfly is a beauty. Its furry blue-gray wings and body are almost palpable.

In the bird category, I chose a crescent honeyeater that I photographed on Deal Island in the middle of the Bass Strait, which separates Australia from Tasmania. Deal Island is part of the Kent Group and Tasmania's most northern national park, accessible only by boat. The honeyeater was feasting on bright purple agapanthus flower nectar and the contrast was impressive.

Iconic scenes...again two...one from the USA and one from Australia.  For the US, I chose the Mount Rushmore National Monument. The photo was taken on Flag Day (June 14th) as 113 people were being sworn in as new US citizens. It was an emotional ceremony and Mt. Rushmore in the background really does take your breath away.

For Australia, the Sydney New Year's Eve fireworks display over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This photo does not do it justice. I can't say more...the display was fantastic and it was a fairy-tale-come-true experience to be there on our own boat seeing, hearing and smelling it live.

For action shots, I wanted something that really connoted action. This shot was filmed at a rodeo held at Crazy Horse Monument in South Dakota. All four of the bull's feet are off the ground, dust is kicking up and the rider is really holding on for dear life. I'd say that connotes action. I had polo ponies and jumpers in the running, but I had the bull by the horns.

Sunflowers...a whole field of them just outside Flagstaff, Arizona.

For whimsical shots, “Skeleton Man Walking Skeleton Dinosaur” on the side of I90 in Murdo, South Dakota was a shoo in.

Second place was Denver's two story tall Blue Bear peeking in through the Performing Arts window.

The best landscape shot is Jackson Lake, Grand Teton National Park. It took our breath away.

More Bonorong

Birds were everywhere at Bonorong...not all in cages. Lorikeets, galahs and cockatoos squawked in the trees. Injured birds, like a blind tawny frogmouth, were caged, but the rest just stayed around of their own volition evidently appreciating a safe haven and a good food supply. A family of Cape Barren geese (labeled a “vulnerable” species) with five fluffy goslings waddled around, complaining a bit when we got too close. A wood duck couple tended their own flock of downy ducklings. A peacock (definitely not a native, but previously abandoned) wandered the grounds and regaled us with a full 360º tail feather display.

Mac, a staff member on his day off, chatted with us amiably as we approached the spotted quoll area. We'd never heard of quolls (other than a Scrabble word) before arriving in Australia. Another endangered species, these furry little marsupials are pretty amazing. About the size of a small, short-haired house cat with a long tail, they're very fierce predators and and can take down an animal the size of a wallaby by biting it in the back of the neck. We spotted three in the cage and Mac let us get some good photos since he was there. They looked cute enough from a distance. We had no urge to go into their cage after we saw one snarl.

A staff-led tour introduced us to Digger the wombat. His mum was killed by a car. He survived in her pouch until he was rescued a few days later and brought to the sanctuary. He was bottle-fed, thrived and is now nearly a year old. I petted him. His fur is coarse like horsehair. He snuggled in the arms of the handler. As snuggly as he is now, we learned that when wombats reach maturity they are solitary and use their strong, cartilage-plated, armor-like back and sharp teeth to defend themselves against any would-be interlopers including sibs, parents and handlers.

Next we visited a koala. We'd seen them in the wild in great numbers at Raymond Island, but always up a tree and we'd never touched one. They look so cute, soft and fuzzy … and they are. They have little tufts of fur on the tips of their ears and even their long-clawed paws are thickly furred. They look absolutely huggable, but I saw this apparently docile koala nip when the handler tried to remove her from a branch on which she clearly wanted to remain.

A koala is not a bear, by the way, and we've been corrected several times on that misnomer. Koala is an aboriginal word meaning no water”. Since they're tree-dwellers and their diets consists of only eucalyptus leaves, they descend to land infrequently. They receive all of the water they need from the large quantities of these leaves they eat daily. Because the leaves lack nourishment, koalas eat lots and do not expend much energy. In fact, they spend 80% of their time sleeping. The males sound like snorting pigs when they vocalize which really spoils their whole fluffy, cuddly image.

The potoroos look ever so much like rats including a long, fur-less tail tipped in white. In actuality, they're the smallest member of the wallaby family and they definitely hop when they locomote. We saw one with her joey and another potoroo shadowed us around the perimeter of the cage. He followed every move we made and had that hang-dog look of a beggar ostensibly looking for a hand-out.

We hand-fed Forester kangaroos and wallabies in a large enclosed paddock with the kanga-chow provided. We spotted a small shed with a terrarium outside of it. A lounge of lizards (yes, that's the correct collective noun unfortunately) crawling all over each other stared up at us with their yellow-brown reptilian eyes. They were blue-tongued lizards to be precise and other than seeing their eyes and blue tongues, it was hard to tell where one scaly lizard began and another left off. We did not request any petting time.

Not all animals are available all the time at Bonorong. When injured animals are well, they're released. When the young are old enough to fend for themselves, they're released. So it was we did not see bandicoots or pandemelons, but I guess that's good. It means most of them are out there having fun in the bush.