Tim Laman

| Wildlife Photojournalist

Wildlife Diaries

The Wildlife Diaries newsletter is the best way to keep up to date with Tim Laman’s latest work and travels, and to learn about photography and natural history as well. Read through his recent posts here or sign up to receive the posts via email using the form on the right.

birds

Backyard Birds in the Snow

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I just wanted to send a brief note to let you know that I’m offering all of my open edition prints for 20% off through Valentine’s Day.  If you or a loved one would enjoy one of my prints, this would be a good time to pick one.

It’s that time of year when the snow flies, and I love seeing what I can capture of my backyard birds when I’m not away traveling.  There is something about the birds in the snow that is simply beautiful, and I enjoy trying to capture unique moments.  We’ve added a few new ones to the gallery – sneak peak below.  

You can browse my full galleries at:  www.timlamanfineart.com

Why do I keep going out and photographing the same birds?  Because sometimes you just catch something unexpected, like this little Black-capped Chickadee, all fluffed up into a ball against the cold, hopping between perches.  That’s the great thing about nature photography.  There is no such thing as the perfect shot, so you are never done.  Nature can always surprise you, and the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

“Chickadee in Mid-Hop”  is now available for purchase in my fine art store, and will definitely put a smile on your face.

[Read more…] about Backyard Birds in the Snow

How We Filmed the Great Argus Pheasant

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The Great Argus pheasant is one of the most spectacular, but also most elusive birds in Borneo.  I have been doing fieldwork in the rainforest of Gunung Palung for over thirty years, and have spent a sum total of over five years of my life in the forest there.  Yet I have only seen a Great Argus with my own eyes once.  Nonetheless, I had a dream of capturing images of this bird performing its courtship display.  

Why did I think it was even possible to photograph such a rare and elusive bird?  The reason is that male Argus choose a small clearing in the forest, and clear some of the leave to make a display arena.  With enough searching in areas where we heard Argus calling, we were able to locate a number of these courts.  We then monitored them with trail cameras to see which ones were active.  Finally, using modern digital cameras in waterproof housings connected to infra-red triggers (which we call “camera traps”), we “staked out” these courts and hoped to capture footage of displaying males.

As it turned out, Argus male frequent their courts much less regularly than we expected, but never the less, as you can see in the images below, we were ultimately successful!  Read on below to learn more about the efforts it took over two years to capture footage for the full behavioral sequence in the recent BBC series “The Mating Game”.  As narrator David Attenborough says in his interview about the film on the BBC website (HERE), “I’m sure it’s the first time its been filmed in the wild”. 

Argus Male Displays to a Female

This is the moment I most wanted to capture – a male Argus Pheasant displaying to a female!  At first glance, this display may remind you of a peacock.  But look closely.  A peacock’s display is made up of its tail fan alone.  The Argus on the other hand, is spreading its wing feathers, covered in amazing eye-spots, to create this mesmerizing presentation.  The male’s head is hidden, tucked behind one of his wings, but he can still watch the female through a tiny gap in the fold of his wing.  His long central tail feathers, cut off at the top of this shot, also are being shaken and are visible to the female above the fan.
[Read more…] about How We Filmed the Great Argus Pheasant

Birds-of-Paradise and Orangutan Fundraiser is Live

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As we near the holiday season I’m reminded once again of how fortunate my family and I have been to weather this pandemic relatively unscathed.  I hope you have been as fortunate, though I’m sure some of you suffered losses of loved ones, and my heartfelt sympathies go out to you.  It’s been a tough couple years.  

As we get through this, I am feeling like I want to devote some energy and resources to helping out the people and conservation activities that I care deeply about in Indonesia, where things have been especially tough.  The best way I can come up with to do that, is to raise funds by selling my art, so I want to let you know that for all bird-of-paradise and orangutan print purchases during my Holliday Sale, which is now live, I will donate 50% of profits to the two charities that I have been supporting the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program, and Papua Konservasi dan Komunitas.

Please visit my online gallery through the link below, and consider a purchase for yourself or as a gift.  You can read more about the two organizations in the links below as well.

Vogelkop Superb Bird-of-Paradise
The Vogelkop Superb Bird-of-Paradise.  The discovery that this bird had a distinct display behavior and that I made with Ed Scholes helped to confirm that it deserved to be a distinct species.  We published this in a paper in 2018, and that has been one of the highlights of our 15 year quest to document birds-of-paradise in the wild.  The reason I share this again now, is that the realization that this was a distinct species that could only be seen in the Arfak Mountains of West Papua, helped to drive an increasing number of birdwatchers to the area.  The local people who we worked with to make the discovery, and who own the land, expanded the guesthouses in their villages, and were starting to see that they could create an economy around grass-roots ecotourism.  Protecting their forests and their birds could create more long term benefits for them then exploiting the forest in the short term.  These were great developments.  And the potential is still there for this movement to grow and expand to more villages and communities across Papua and help maintain a green future.  However the pandemic has thrown a wrench into this promising development as visitors have been unable to go to Indonesia and all birding tours have been cancelled for nearly two years now.  The small NGO I work with, Papua Konservasi, has been sending donations directly to villages to help them get by during this time.  Any purchase you make of a bird-of-paradise print during my sale will help this cause, so thanks for your consideration.  Helping support these local landowners, the guardians of the forests where birds-of-paradise live, is the most direct way I can think of to help the birds.  And of course protecting these forest in Papua is also a key to mitigating climate change.  So its a win-win all around.

Vogelkop Superb Bird-of-Paradise Performing is now available for purchase in my fine art store HERE.

[Read more…] about Birds-of-Paradise and Orangutan Fundraiser is Live

Dreaming of Africa

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I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel!  Where are you dreaming of traveling to?  I have many places on my list.  It may be a little while yet, but the first place I will head back to internationally will definitely be Borneo, to continue coverage of the orangutans and biodiversity of Gunung Palung National Park.  But many other places are also calling, and the wonders of East Africa are certainly among them.  I have many fond memories of my safaris there, and hope to go back soon.  In the mean time, we have been working on expanding my Limited Edition collection in my fine art gallery, and I’m excited to announce the addition of the image below.

The Vulture Tree
One hot, hazy afternoon in the Serengeti in 2018, we were driving around in our vehicle, but it wasn’t exactly the time of day when I expected to make an outstanding wildlife image.  But then we spotted this lone Ruppel’s vulture, perched in this old dead tree, which was a beautiful piece of sculpture in itself.  The vulture had its wings spread partially, in a posture that likely was helping get some airflow over his body to help it cool off.  I carefully directed our driver to get us into a position where the branches formed the best framing around the vulture.  The hazy afternoon light added the atmosphere and the slightly ocher color palette.  The resulting image ended up being one of my Limited Edition prints.
A Few Other Favorites from Africa

Here are a few other favorites from Africa that are in my Limited Edition Collection:

A herd of wildebeest cross the Mara River during their annual migration.  Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.
[Read more…] about Dreaming of Africa

Yasuni National Park, Ecuador

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Cobalt-winged Parakeets (Brotogeris cyanoptera) feeding on clay at the clay lick east of Anangu and south of the Napo River, Yasuni National Park, Orellana Province, Ecuador

For the January 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine, I was part of a team of five Nat Geo photographers including Ivan Kashinsky, Karla Gachet, David Liittschwager and Steve Winter.  We went to Ecuador for one month to document the biologically richest place on the planet, Yasuni National Park, and the important conservation issues and human cultural issues surrounding it.  Here is the feature story at Nat Geo.

You can see how all our efforts came together to tell the story in this interactive.

Also, Spencer Milsap of Nat Geo produced this video piece, which my assistant Anand Varma and I also helped to shoot.  It captures what it was like to work on this story in the Amazon rain forest of Ecuador.

Cockatoo Pair

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I am still in the Cape York Peninsula of Australia.  The spectacular Sulfur-crested Cockatoos are so common here, that we rarely give them a second look after several weeks in the field.  But this pair at a nest cavity was worth a shot.