The Fosa

The Fosa

 

I love lemurs but when I visited Madagascar the top animal I really wanted to see and photograph was the Fosa – the largest land carnivore on the island, and like many other mammals here, endemic to the island.  It also happens to be one of the most difficult animals to see.  Up till a few years ago it was almost impossible for tourists to see any in the wild unless they were tremendously lucky.  But nowadays you have a fair chance to see one if you visit the Kirindy Reserve on the western side of the island.  There are a few fosas that visit the only camp in the reserve and they are relatively habituated to human presence.  The fosa pictured here is not one of those though.  We found it while hiking in the forest at night – and I nearly had a heart attack from the excitement of seeing it!  We had been searching and searching for hours, day and night over 2 days and all I had to show for it was a brief glimpse of one close to camp.  Of course that was not enough for me – I wanted a proper photo!  And luckily for me, this curious young male perching high up in a tree could not take its eyes off us!  Mutual fascination is a recipe for some good photos – unfortunately it was during the night, not too ideal for photography, but you can’t have it all!  Looking on the bright side, the set of photos I have from this sighting are a bit unusual as not many are photographed during the night.

Techs:  Canon 7D | Canon 300 2.8 IS II | f2.8 | 1/250 | ISO 800 | Canon 600EX-RT off camera (I did work a bit on the eyes in photoshop to remove a little bit of reflection resulting from the use of flash.  Though in some photos I managed to angle the flash correctly, sometimes I failed)