The puffin is beautiful and colorful bird, also called Sea Parrot or Clown Bird. In Greenland it is possible to find the Atlantic Puffin, also called common puffin. You can read more about this species here.

Where you can find puffins? Can you see puffin in Greenland?

The common puffin can be found in few places like British Isles, Norway, Iceland, and also Greenland.

Especially in Greenland, it is quite easy to book a tour to spot these beautiful and colorful birds in East Greenland: there is a colony nearby Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, quite easily accessible by specialized tours.

How to see puffin in Greenland?

I’ve personally travelled with Nuuk Water Taxi, and it has been a very good experience: it was just 4 passengers, we went straight to the small islet where there is a very concentrated population of puffins. We stayed there for around 1 and a half hour, plenty of time to take THOUSANDS of photography. The tour was in the evening, so in summer time it is perfect to catch the golden light of the sunset (kind of sunset, since the sun almost never set in summer).

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Fireflies season is usually from the end of May to the end of June, just at the beginning of summer time. To find them, you need a very dark place and avoid pollution, both light, water and air ones.

All of this makes quite difficult to find them from my home (I live in very downtown Milan), and I have been wondering about since last year, when Covid made it definately impossible to move around!

Finally I got my chance this year where I joined a workshop organized by a local foundation, the same one that organizes the italian exhibitions of  Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The big plus of this, is being accompanied by renowed photographers and having access to special places for spotting fireflies.

During a week night, I travelled 3 hours to reach a private forest in the Apennines nearby Bologna, where I met a local photographer.

Shooting fireflies is quite tricky for 2 reasons:

1. you need very long exposures, from 30 seconds to 3-5 minutes, so you need to use a remote for setting up the bulb shutter mode
2. you need to set up your frame and your focus BEFORE it gets pitch black! once its dark every light will disturb the fireflies and possibily scare them away, so it is crucial to set up your scene and decide everything before the night comes. You can eventually turn on a light to change your frame (and refocus), but you will risk to not having so many fireflies after

As you can imagine, this takes a lot of practice, and it is quite difficult (at least it was for me) to get it all right the first time! I am quite satisfied with just 3 shots:

This was one of the first frames I did in the night, and to amplify the number of fireflies in the frame I merged multiple shots, and gave it a blue tint. It really reminds me of  Starry Night painting of Van Gogh.

I really like the movement of this shots, its dynamicity. The vertical frame I believe empowers the shape of the tree in the background, which, by the way, is out of focus, but it adds to the scene. I’ve tried the replicate the frame in the next one.

The tree here is fully focused, by maybe the photo lost its dynamicity. I’ve posted it anyway because I can’t decide myself!

Here’s the resuly instead of a very long exposure of 3 minutes, it looks almost like daytime!

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If you live in a European city like me, wildlife photography is something that you immediately link to a big trip to Africa or maybe South America.

It is true that even within Europe you can shot wildlife, for example brown bears in Easter Europe or Germany, or reindeers in Scandinavia, so it is my fault that I never explored my neighbourhood for this type of photography.

“Thanks to Covid-19” (probably one of the few things that we can thank this global tragedy ), I discovered amazing opportunities to do wildlife photography even in urban northern Italy: the beautiful Alps and its natural parks.

There are several places and occasion to see widlife in the Alps, that of course require a little bit of trekking and patience (not like sitting in a car doing an african safari). A good one is in October for the “belling of the deer” season, where their sounds echo all around the forests.

A very good place to start your trekking is the National Park of Gran Paradiso, a nature paradise that surrounds the italian regions of Piedmont and Aosta Valley. We’ve organized a trekking with local guides of NaturaAlp, that focused our excursion on our fitness level and our goal in taking wildlife photography.

Our first spotting, not quite wildlife, were these very particular cows of a local breed, that really looked like bisons… I know, they are just cows, but I found them quite beautiful. (here the breed if you are interested)

The beginning of the trek was already quite lucky, as we spotted a chamois walking in the breezing morning around the empty houses of a local village:

Along the trekking up into the mountains, we’ve spotted other chamois, getting quite close to them.

After almos 3 hours of trekking we reached our destination, at around 2,300 meters of altitude, and I have to say, the landscape was well worth the (extremely intense for my level) trekking.

At this point we even spotted a couple of birds of prey (not sure of the correct species), very close to us, and I gave it a shot trying to capture them on camera.

But my hope (and final goal) for my italian wildlife safari in the alps was to find the Ibex, and thankfully we’ve been lucky spotting an herd right in front of us: I have slowly crawled on the rocks as close to them as possible and spent almost an hour taking photography of them.

I wish I had some camouflage with me to get close to them, but I have to say that for being my first time ever in shooting  mountain wildlife, the results are quite ok!

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There are however several opportunities to see great wildlife in the country, so you can keep yourself busy for at least 7-8 days of trip in Uganda (if you consider 2-3 days for Gorilla tracking)

Kibale Forest National Park

Without leaving the primates family, an exceptional experience is seeing che chimpanzees, that are actually our closest cousins.

The main chimp tracking in the country is done in the Kibale Forest National Park, that is also where I strongly recommend you to book. Main reasons are the easiness of trekking, concentration of families and closeness to them. There are other tracking in Uganda (such as in Queen Elizabeth National Park), but nowhere else you will get such an high probability to see chimpanzees like in Kibale Forest.

You could either choose to do a chimpanzee tracking experience (the shorter one, around one hour with them) or a chimpanzee habituation, where you can spend around half a day with them. Obviously I recommend you the latter.

Keep in mind that chimpanzee families in the habituation experience (as the word suggest) has to be habituated yes to human presence, so it might be harder to see them up close, like it happened with my group.

But no worries since the guides are there to make the best experience for you: after spending few hours watching a chimp family really up in the trees, we moved to a more habituated one (where other groups doing the tracking were staying), and we got to see them really, really close.

I don’t usually recommend specific accommodations, but I have to make an exception for Isunga Lodge, a beautiful lodge placed on a hill, overlooking a mesmerizing valley. But more than the beauty of the place, the cleanliness, the good food is the outstanding service provided by the owners and the staff. By the way, I shot this photos from the lounge:

The second best spot for wildlife is the Queen Elizabeth National Park, the main and biggest national park in Uganda, that can be divided in two different parts: Ishasha sector and Kazinga Channel.

Queen Elizabeth NP: Ishasha Sector

There is one and very good reason to come to the far-west side of Queen Elizabeth National Park: the tree climbing lions.

This population of lions has the habit to climb up fig trees to escape the extreme heat on the ground, especially during midday hours (from 11am to 3pm).

They are not the only ones in the world, but surely the most famous ones!

You have to remember anyway that the number of lions is actually very low and sometimes the cross the border to Congo, so you have to be lucky.

If they are within the park, is very easy to spot them, just look for fig trees, within the branches.

You can spend 1-2 days here looking and shooting lions, but beware that the concentration of wildlife in the area is actually pretty low: we just saw some impalas, buffalos and hear hippos near the river. So don’t spend more than 1-2 days around here.

Queen Elizabeth NP Kazinga Channel

Kazinga channel is a 40 km stream of water that connects Lake Georgia and Lake Victoria, and home to an amazing concentration of safari wildlife, that is why is the top 1 spot for wildlife spotting and photography.

My recommendation is to do 1 or 2 boat tours, 1 during midday (where the thirsty animals come to drink water) and 1 in the sunset-early morning, to get a better light for photography.

There are the official national park safari boat, that departure near the mweya safari lodge (the most expensive lodge in the area), and the community boat tours, organized by local villagers. These are a good addition to the experience, plus you will help the local communities (you can book them through here).

Queen Elizabeth National Park game drives

Around the Kazinga Channel, there are many tracks for game drives. As wildlife, you can expect to see herbivores (like gazelles and antelopes), elephants (some big herds here), lions (more difficult), leopard (we spotted one, very rare), hyenas, hippos, buffalos.

There are no giraffes and no cheetah.

There is also the possibility to do night game drives, where a ranger comes with you on your vehicle (if you have one, otherwise you can rent it) equipped with a huge torch. It was among the highlight of the experience, especially when we follow a pack of lions beginning the hunt. Don’t miss this experience.

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Kolmanskop

Namib Ghost Town of Kolmanskop

For Kolmanskop take a look at my full article here.

Namib Desert

This is the oldest desert in the world, with world famous spots such as the dune 45:

Deadvlei, a dead salt lake with fossilized trees.

Tall, impressive dune that you can ride on

In the surrounding area of Soussuvlei there are scenic lodges that will put you in front of endless desert. This one for example is the Desert Homestead Lodge, seen from the drone perspective

This area has also one of the darkest sky in the world, making it the perfect place for astrophotography.

Sandwich Harbour

Namib Desert is connected to the coastal city of Swakopmund with a lonesome road into the wilderness, with the only famous outpost of Solitaire.

Solitaire is a remote settlement in Central Namibia, and is has been a stopover for travelers for more than 60 years.

It is the only place for gas and food in the 5 hours journey that crosses the Namib Desert to the coastal town of Walvis Bay. It features a gas station, a lodge and a bakery, nationwide famous for its apple pie, the best of Namibia.

I didn’t have the pleasure of trying it during our road trip: we were short on time and I got to chose between tasting the cake and taking photos: the hard choices of a travel photographer!

Solitaire

Along the way, you can encounter wildlife such us Oryx just next to the road.

Once in Swakopmund, the main sight is a day trip to Sandwich Harbour, where the desert meets the ocean.

Skeleton Coast

“The Land God Made in Anger”: this is how Bushmen used to call the Skeleton Coast, an unwelcoming stripe of more than 1.500 kilometers in the north of Namibia. Also straightforwardly referred by Portuguese sailors as “The Gates of Hell”.

The scenario is made of arid dunes that end up in the ocean, where violent waves and sudden fogs show up to welcome the few visitors that shows up. Actually, only lions, hyenas and occasionally elephants walk around here, since the whole region is uninhabited.

The only witnesses of human presences are the many shipwrecks on the coast, like the Zeila in this shot, a fishing boat that crashed on the shore only 10 years ago, the last victim of this hostile, end-of-the-worldly land.

Cape Cross Seal Reserve

This massive colony of hundred of thousands of seals will allow you a very, very close encounter with seals. Just beware of the noise and the smell!

Damaraland and Spitkoppe

Spitzkoppe is a rock mountain in the region of Damarland, with some of the most scenic landscapes of Namibia.

Spitzkoppen

A true gem is the Spitzkoppen Lodge, a majestic resort hidden in the rocks of the mountain. You can actually spot it in the bottom right corner of the above picture!

Otjitotongwe Cheetah Guestfarm

This place, between Damaraland and Etosha National Park, lets you get a very close look to some domesticated cheetah.

The struggle between large carnivores and farmers is real in all Africa. While in Kenya it often ends up in a tragedy (for the animals), in Namibia often it is converted in a touristic attraction.

Instead of killing of cheetahs that are threatening the hers, Namibian farmers are domesticating them, letting travelers have a close up encounter with them. Better off dead than domesticated for these majestic animals? Or this could raise awareness on their conditions?

If you are (literally) good, maybe some of them could decide to taste you a little bit. Truly an amazing scene like this one!

Etosha National Park

One of the main attractions of Namibia, this national park is famous for its self-driving safari. Human-build waterholes let you easily spot wildlife that comes to drink, with the opportunity to have a close look to elephants, giraffes, lions, zebras, rhinos and if you are lucky leopards.

Okonjima Nature Reserve

Okonjima is a private reserve home to the AfriCat foundation, and an unmissable place to meet cheetahs and leopards

One evening this majestic male leopard had quite a company during his tasty Oryx dinner: from one side there was me, silently and breathlessly taking photos of this amazing wildlife scene.

On the other side two hungry brown hyenas, that patiently were waiting for the big cat to leave them some leftover.

This temporary wildlife restaurant happened at the AfriCat Foundation, a Namibian non-profit organization. Its goal is to mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict on commercial farmlands, through the education and research of large cat carnivores.

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