Photo Details: Male Vervet Monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops) on tree branch, Mashatu Game Reserve, Tuli Block, Botswana.

Although many people think vervet monkeys are cute, they can become dangerous pests when they lose their fear of humans. This usually happens after people start feeding them in wildlife and nature reserves, in spite of pleas by wildlife authorities not to do so.

Photo Details:: Lesser Masked Weaver (Ploceus intermedius) is all concentration as he begins building a new nest, Kruger National Park, South Africa.

Photo Details: Hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius), its jaws resting on the substantial back of one of its brethren, looks amused by the egret sharing its "cushion", Mkhuze Game Reserve, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Photo Details: Close-up of Lioness (Panthera leo) looking directly at the camera, Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana.
Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel (300D)
Lens: Canon 100-400mm IS zoom
Focal Length: 400mm
Shutter Speed: 1/200
Aperture: f 8
ISO: 400

Free Pictures
This picture is one of 40 wildlife and nature-related images that I'm now offering as free downloads.

Although in the past I've resisted offering free images for commercial use - because I try to subsidise the costs of my web site by selling photos - I've now relented.

I get many emails asking permission to use pictures for various purposes, so decided to save everyone time and effort by offering a bank of free pictures that can be simply downloaded and used, without worrying about copyright infringement.

There are some restrictions and conditions, so please read these before downloading and using any images. But generally you can do a lot more with them than you can from pictures purchased from subscription and budget stock photo sites.

The search facility has been quietly beta-tested with the help of the 40,000-member Nikonians online community (Nikonians.org), which has been gathering news, articles, reviews, and lively forum discussions for the past six years.

As Nikonians.org grew in membership the free information available at the site expanded to a large resource library covering a wide range of photography topics surrounding the Nikon brand.

"Keeping up with that much information required an internal upgrade to the site's search engine" says Nikonians co-founder Bo Stahlbrandt.

"We have over 400,000 pages of Nikon related content on our site alone, and our members wanted access to that, as well as the rest of the Web, all from one portal," he said.

"The result is NikoScope, a fast search engine built on modern technology, designed to gather and sort not only our published information, but also the relevant resources of the Internet."

Photo Details: Zebra (Equus burchelli) walking past a huge boulder, Ithala Game Reserve, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Camera: Canon EOS 350D
Lens: Canon 100-400mm IS zoom
Focal Length: 400mm
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 400

More Info: Ithala Game Reserve covers an area of 30 000 hectares, about a quarter of which is open bushveld that allows good game viewing. Much of the remainder is made up of spectacular valleys carrying rivers and streams, steep cliff-faces, and granite boulder outcrops. This mixed terrain allows a wide variety of plants and animals to flourish, including about 80 mammal species and 320 bird species.

The photo above, taken in the late afternoon, shows a zebra dwarfed by one of the massive granite boulders that lie scattered on hills and mountain slopes throughout the reserve.

Ithala is administered by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (formerly the Natal Parks Board), the formal body that runs many of the game reserves and conservation areas within the province of KwaZulu-Natal.