This is fox territory. Raccoons are not welcome.

A note pinned to the door: the fox is IN.

Sunday evening I am flying down to South Africa to spend a couple of weeks at the Kalahari Meerkat Project (aka Meerkat Manor). I probably won't be online much, or at all, while I'm there, so please talk amongst yourselves until I get back.

I will take lots of photographs

Edit: back now!

For the next couple of weeks I'm heading up to Canada-land, to the Cape Churchill area to look for polar bears (also arctic foxes and other pretty things).

*checks weather in Churchill*

*packs more clothes*

If I am not entirely frozen, I should have photos for you all when I get back.

For the next two weeks I will be in the French Alps on an Earthwatch project studying marmots.

http://www.earthwatch.org/exped/cohas.html

There will be marmot photos here when I get back

Humans might think we invented extreme sports, but we are fooling ourselves. Here at last is proof that it was really all about the weasels.

http://www.dannestorimages.com/p638.....f557#h2fc6f557

Also, I am insanely jealous of Danny Nestor for taking this photo.

Tpday is Squirrel Appreciation Day! Yay!

I can't post today's photo here because this is a family site and we don't want any of that evil squirrel porn on FA, no sirree! So here is a link.

It's Squirrel Appreciation Day! So we're making more squirrels!

Seriously, what is up with all the random meerkat appearances in this year's crop of holiday movies? First in Arthur Christmas and now the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie?

Not that I'm complaining. Added meerkats is always a good thing!

Arthur Christmas turned out to be a really good movie, but if you are a person with ears try and show up five minutes late to avoid the godawful Justin Bieber music video they insisted on tacking on before the movie.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked is (much) better than last year's Chipmunks movie. Still, I wouldn't really recommend it unless you're like me and think that singing chipmunks are worth going to see regardless of how much crappy movie gets stuck on around them.

For those who might be interested, I've set up a gallery on my website with a selection of photos from my trip to Botswana. I will also continue to be posting the animal photos here on FA.

http://dailyanimals.net/gallery/botswana

For the next three weeks my camera and I will be on vacation, visiting my family in England and then two weeks in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Will post photos when I get back!

Some while back I was asked for permission to use one of my polecat photos on the new Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Program website. Of course I was totally happy for the ferrets to be using my photos, because ferrets are super-awesome! Especially black-footed ones.

It took them a while to get the site going, but it's now up, and you can find my photo appearing on the Mustelidae page.

Also, there is a Ferret Cam. With baby ferrets!

The Rite: we follow the tale of a former believer who has lost faith but now finds himself confronting the reality of demonic possession, for in this world everything the Catholic Church tells us is true.

Season of the Witch: we follow the tale of a former believer who has lost faith but now finds himself confronting the reality of demonic possession, for in this world everything the Catholic Church tells us is true. In the Middle Ages.

The Rite has Anthony Hopkins and Rutger Hauer. Season of the Witch has Nicolas Cage and a semi-cool CGI demon. Season of the Witch has an awesome 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, but for me it was much the better of the two movies.

Black Swan: this is your brain .. *smashes watermelon with hammer* .. this is your brain on ballet. This was a surprisingly excellent movie. I can see how the crossover market for "disturbing, fucked-up, descent-into-madness psychological dramas" and "movies about ballet" might be kind of limited, but if you think at all that this might be interesting, definitely go see it.

The Green Hornet: there are two guys, and a girl, and a car, and fighting, and explosions. We're not exactly breaking new ground here. It's okay for what it is, but lacked any kind of spark to elevate it above the average.

Last week:

Tuesday: Shrek the Musical at Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. There were two good bits -- the dragon, and the rat-dance -- the rest was mediocre to okay. I was really disappointed with the ugly open-face animal costumes. The cameo appearance by the Lion King Musical was a cute but possibly ill-advised reminder of what a good animated movie-turned-musical is like.

Wednesday: ever since watching Hell's Kitchen I've had a hankering for beef wellington. Wednesday night we had dinner at Papillon restaurant, the local fine dining establishment, where I was able to get my beef wellington fix. Also tried frog's legs for the first time ever (kind of bony, and didn't taste of anything special, but they came in a very nice sauce). And dessert was delicious (peach bread budding with butter pecan ice cream).

Thursday: I took Krahnos to see the Cavalia horse show for his birthday. Think Cirgue de Soleil but with added horses. The horses were very pretty and clever, and the human performers were not at all bad too.

Also went to see True Grit, a surprise late contender for best film of 2010. And it had a better bear costume than anything in Shrek.

Friday: New Year's Evening, stayed at home with rats and went to bed early, because I am boring and have no friends.

For anyone who might be interested, I've created an account at redbubble,com and will be posting some of my photos there (as well as here and at dailyanimals.net), so that people can buy prints - framed, unframed, posters, postcards, more!

http://dailyanimals.redbubble.com - decorate your room with wildlife!

If anyone would like any of my older photos put onto redbubble please leave a comment here or on the photo page.

Trained animals do cute and clever things. The ferret was a total darling!

There was some kind of movie wrapped around the animal tricks, but I mostly just ignored that. The animals got plenty of screen time, so I was happy :)

For those who might be interested, here is the complete set of my giant otter videos on youtube:

Giant otter of the Pantanal
Giant otters play with dangling vines
Otters vs Crocodile
Giant otter periscoping
Giant otter family

For anyone who would like to see more of my meerkat photos, I have a Meerkat Gallery on my website at http://dailyanimals.net/meerkats.html

These photos were all taken in the Kuruman River Reserve in September 2003. They are the same meerkats that were filmed for the Meerkat Manor series on Animal Planet.

From the 2009 BBC Wildlife photo competition:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats.....=7&group=1

This. This is what I aspire to with my photography. Sharing a moment in the life of some beautiful wild creature, and leaving it free to live out its life in the manner of its kind.

Sometimes, taking photos of animals in zoos just feels like cheating.

The dragons are gorgeous and completely adorable.

But ...

Is anyone else unhappy that the dragons just ended up going from living in service to the giant queen dragon, to living in service to the humans. Don't they ever get to be free?

And if they just killed off the queen, haven't they actually doomed the dragons to extinction?

Later today I will be heading off down to LA for the Gallifrey One Doctor Who convention, and hopefully not to be abducted by daleks. Also hope to find time to visit the LA Zoo and the super-cute channel island foxes!

Big rocks! Big trees! Big snow! Raccoons!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/877557.....6917897/detail

Fantastic Mr Fox: best fox movie ever!

I love the new Vegas ads with the chinchillas :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_RQJ2lDq64

dailyanimals.net 2009 calendar -- California wildlife

link