Kinkajou.

[JohnP]

These are not great photos and I'm only posting them for their interest value. When I went to Ecuador in March 2011 on a birding and nature based holiday I spent time in Andes and also the cloud and rainforests, plus five days in the Amazon Basin. It was the holiday of my life. I took these shots of a Kinkajou which is also known as the Honey Bear when I was staying in the rainforest, I stayed in a large wooden building which contained nine bedrooms on three floors. My room was on the top floor and I had a small belcony overlooking the forest. The owner had tied a rope around the belcony handrail and then around one of the trees, the idea being to tie an over ripe banana to the rope and then pull one side of the rope when pushing the other side in order to send the banana out to the tree where the Kinkajou's could find it. These animals only come out at night and are hardly ever seen, however the owner told me that one of them would come across the rope and if I went out when it was dark and kept very quiet I might be lucky and see it. In order to get these shots I had to hold a small penlight in one hand and my compact camera in the other hand, I had to do things this way because it was so dark I couldn't see the Kinkajou otherwise. Anyway I managed to get a result even if the shots are not that good.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3

[Phil]

Have you considered setting up a Blog of your visits? :)

[annie]

i will say you do get around john..............it must have been fantastic seeing this little matey appear...........

[JohnP]

i will say you do get around john..............it must have been fantastic seeing this little matey appear...........

I really liked him/her... no room in my bag though or I would have brought it back with me... only joking... :laughing:

[Heather]

oh wow lucky you to have seen one of these ! what a beautiful creature

[IanB]

Very good pictures in the circumstances & very inventive use of available resources IMHO

One thing I find slightly surprising is that the slightest noise would frighten him away, but he doesn't seem too bothered about having a bright light shone in his eyes.

Thank you for posting these shots of something that I would never have seen otherwise.

[JohnP]

Very good pictures in the circumstances & very inventive use of available resources IMHO

One thing I find slightly surprising is that the slightest noise would frighten him away, but he doesn't seem too bothered about having a bright light shone in his eyes.

Thank you for posting these shots of something that I would never have seen otherwise.

Ian... the bright light is actually the flash of my compact camera. I only used a very tiny penlight to locate him/her, in the rainforest it is unbelievably dark and it is impossible to see anything. When just looking at the LCD screen I couldn't see anything so the tiny penlight just let me see enough to point the camera in the right direction. Strange as it may seem the flash didn't seem to bother him/her. A few years ago I used the same technique when taking photos of Gecko's when on holiday in La Palma, Canary Islands.

Going back to the rainforest, unless you have been you don't really know what darkness is, you might think it's dark out in the country at night, but Britain is covered in street lighting and no matter where you are this has the effect of reducing darkness. When I was a kid and street lighting consisted of a 100 watt lamp every 100 yards or so you could see the milky way, it's hard to do that these days.