Still leaping ahead!
Earth-Touch, the portal that brings you high-quality video footage of wildlife from around the world, is going from strength to strength, thanks to you!
Every month, the number of people visiting www.earth-touch.com is growing by thousands. More people than ever are also visiting the Earth-Touch blog
, downloading our podcasts, watching our videos on YouTube, and joining our quality Flickr group, where they can upload their own wildlife images.
In this newsletter, we bring you a selection of news and information about our footage, crews and expeditions to places ranging from the deserts of Namibia to the forests of Thailand
Coming up
The latest Earth-Touch film brief given to Barry Skinstad and his crew was to set up base camp in East London, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, ahead of the annual sardine run. This amazing annual event on the marine wildlife calendar, dubbed ‘the greatest shoal on earth’, usually starts between mid-May and early June, which is why they’re already on standby.
Although this is an eagerly anticipated annual event, the ‘sards’ don’t always deliver. The past two years are an example of this, with no-shows by the little silver fish. But if and when they do run, the sardines swim close inshore to make use of the cold current that forms off Cape Agulhas (at the southern tip of Africa) and sweeps up the coast to KwaZulu-Natal. Riding this current, they travel in huge silvery shoals many kilometres long and several kilometres wide. As they make their way north, there’s guaranteed to be an amazing show of sealife, from birds to sharks and dolphins, which turn out in great numbers for the movable feast.
The latest from Wild Touch
Our Earth-Touch TV offering, screened on SABC2 every weekday at 10.30am in South Africa, is called Wild Touch. This popular programme has been running for more than a month now, with just under 100 episodes remaining.
Highlights have included the lion prides of Moremi in the Okavango Delta of Botswana and the bottlenose dolphins of Sodwana Bay.
What has been most interesting for those working on this project is the changing behaviour of both terrestrial and marine species as the seasons slowly change.
Interest in Wild Touch is growing daily and there’s even a group of dedicated grannies who get together every day to watch the programme and mail us their comments!
Field crew profile: Brad Bestelink
Brad Bestelink joined Earth-Touch in 2007 and is currently based in Botswana. He has been a film-maker for close to 15 years, yet his career started quite by chance. Brad joined a film crew three months after leaving high school and hasn’t looked back since.
He has filmed for Earth-Touch mostly around the Okavango Delta in the Nxamaseri Channel, Kalahari Desert and Moremi Game Reserve.
‘My favourite animal is the elephant because they are sentient beings,’ says Brad. ‘It is one of the few animals in the world whose brain keeps growing; that’s why it has the capacity to feel emotions,’ he adds. This from a man who’s brought us amazing footage of lions
, kudu, elephant, buffalo
, rhino, zebra, wild dogs, leopard
, puff adders, storks, hornbills
, monkeys, baboons … the list is endless.
His best moment while filming for Earth-Touch was coming across lion cubs in their den in Moremi. ‘For me, there’s nothing bad about being in the bush,’ he says with a broad grin.
Below are just some of the links to the amazing clips that Brad Bestelink has filmed for Earth-Touch:
Dancing lily,
Kudu drink in early morning,
Wild dogs rest and play,
Hyenas dog leopard,
Flood plain teems with life,
Storks watch giraffe go by,
Wildebeest at sunrise,
Barbel run in the Okavango,
Elephant affinity,
Lone cheetah on the hunt,
Puff adders mate
Footage focus: Animal babies
Over the months, Earth-Touch has been privileged to witness the early days, survival struggles and playful moments of many young animals. Here is a selection of these video clips.
In the Okavango Delta of Botswana, we have been following the development of lion cubs and have discovered a den of leopard cubs too.
Also in Moremi Game Reserve, a zebra foal rests and a young chacma baboon tries out all sorts of positions in a tree.
In the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, warthog piglets drink from their mother before having a mud bath.
Meerkat pups emerge from their burrow for the first time in the Karoo, near the town of Oudtshoorn in South Africa.
Earth-Touch followed the fortunes of a breeding colony of African skimmers in the Okavango, and captured the first chick
breaking out of its egg. Still with birdlife, we watched some yellow-billed kite chicks on the KwaZulu-Natal coast develop to the point of being able to fly.
We filmed a little elephant dipping its trunk in the water in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, not yet able to use it to drink.
Swimming also takes some practice, as we see with this southern right whale calf in the waters of the Western Cape.
Rhesus monkey babies cavort in a national park in Thailand, while endangered African wild dog pups are also playful in this Okavango clip.
Still too young to play, a newborn giraffe is led away from the herd by its protective mother.
You can even see some juvenile fish at Ribbon Reef, Sodwana Bay.
Blog highlights
Did you know some of the 1500 species of scorpions can go for a year without eating?
And have you thought about the different kinds of symbiosis found in nature?
Did you even want to know that on hot days, the marabou stork urinates onto its legs, presumably to cool off through evaporation?
These are just some of the facts to be found on the Earth-Touch blog site, which highlights the footage on the main Earth-Touch
site and gives users more information about the creatures and habitats featured there. It’s also a place where you can add your comments, vote on various issues, download screensavers, subscribe to RSS feeds and search for the topics that interest you most.
The blog contains several categories. ‘Featured on Earth-Touch’
describes some of the video diaries you can see on the Earth-Touch site and provides links to them. These blog entries give a sense of what you will be able to see in the video clip, and may alert you to stories you missed. Sometimes they also group videos together in themes.
The ‘Did you know’ category contains additional research about a species or a type of behaviour. At Earth-Touch, we do our best to select reliable sources of information and to credit them so that our information is authoritative.
‘Wildlife news from around the world’ reports on news such as the
discovery of a new species, or scientific research that has revealed new insights into nature.
‘From the field’ is a chance for Earth-Touch film crews to have their
say and share some of the amazing, exhilarating, scary and amusing experiences they have in their extraordinary jobs. We also get guest blogs from non-Earth-Touch contributors.
Our ‘Flickr pic of the day’ category has been a huge success and has brought you stunning wildlife photographs from all over the world, via our
Flickr group.
Then there's the ‘In-house’ category, where Earth-Touch staff share
their thoughts and where we tell you about new offerings and features on the site.
Earth-Touch Flickr group flourishes
It’s been three months since we started our own Earth-Touch group on Flickr, and it has already exceeded all expectations. Today we have almost 430 members, and over 4 000 images!
We have attracted a high-quality membership, most of whom are Flickr Pro members. Furthermore, we’ve appointed three new ‘admins’ from the group members who are helping us to attract the best Flickr photographers, and to keep our group interactive and exciting.
We continue to feature a ‘Pic of the Day’ every weekday on the blog from submissions by our Flickr members. View all previous pix of the day on here.
View our wildlife images in our gallery on the blog site, and if you’d like to share some of your own wildlife pictures with us, please join Flickr!
New Earth-Touch publishing links
Earth-Touch is spreading its wings to bring you real life, now! We have just extended our publishing wing to include Earth-Touch footage on two other websites. We are currently publishing on YouTube and have expanded this service to publish on MyVideo, a platform where South Africans can share videos.
From May 2008, we also hope to be showcasing our highlights footage on a dedicated Portuguese channel called TVNET. Watch this space for more on that exciting possibility!
Interesting stats: Dolphins appear out of the blue
The story Dolphins appear out of the blue
has become Earth-Touch’s most popular story to date, with over 7 000 views and growing. It has replaced Male lions defend territory by roaring in the night, which now has over 2 700 views.
Dolphins is a phenomenon, going from zero to hero in just 12 days, from publishing on 9 May 2008. The lion footage previously in top spot took just over a month to register the views it has now. It was published on 10 April 2008.
We’d love to hear from you!
We love hearing from you on Earth-Touch. Please contact us at info@earth-touch.com, or leave a message on one of our story packages on the website
or on a blog post.
We look forward to seeing you on-line!
Best regards,
The Earth-Touch team
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Exciting new screensavers
Every month Earth-Touch offers readers access to some of our magnificent photography in the form of free downloadable screensavers. Four different screensavers are currently available on the blog, to download in both Mac and PC format.
We’ve showcased a wide variety of wildlife and stunning landscapes from many locations across the globe in these screensavers, which have proved to be an extremely popular addition to our services.
To download screensavers, click on here and follow the prompts.
The Earth-Touch podcast is a pre-packaged digital media selection that is automatically sent to subscribers. It showcases highlights of the website’s content. You can play this podcast on a portable media player, on your computer, or even on your digital TV!
The podcast is available in three formats: HD (high definition), SD (standard definition) and iPod. You choose your preferred version. And, best of all, this service costs you nothing!
You can subscribe to the podcasts using RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This tool makes it possible for you to keep up with all changes and stories on your favourite websites without having to visit each site. RSS automatically pushes content to you through a feed that is regularly updated. And what you don’t want, you can simply ignore.
You will need an RSS reader. This can be a downloadable program, or some internet browsers have an RSS reader function built in.
You subscribe to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader, or by clicking the RSS icon of the content you want. The icon looks like a radar signal, and is most often orange in colour. The icon also appears in the address bar of your browser on sites where feeds are available.
To subscribe to Earth-Touch Podcast, or a number of other RSS feeds from Earth-Touch, or get further information, please visit this page.
Most popular stories of all time on Earth-Touch
Dolphins appear out of the blue
Out in the bay where the waves break, a pod of these marine mammals emerges from deeper water.
Male lions defend territory by roaring in the night
We believe that Gochathebe, the island in the Okavango Delta in Botswana where we are currently based, is an overlapping territory for different lion prides.
Close encounter with a leviathan
A female whale, seemingly enjoying the company, links up with me and follows me around, careful not to swipe me with her huge fluke.
Meerkats huddle in the cold
A group of suricates – more commonly known as meerkats – return from their daily forage to huddle together in the bitter cold, before disappearing into their burrow.
Unusual reef is full of surprises
It’s a special day at Sodwana, as the Indian Ocean offers up everything from coral and shrimps to dolphins and the world’s largest fish.
Masters of the sneak
Zambezi sharks swim close to the lens, as their activity heightens ahead of the arrival of a cold front.
Spiky sea urchins feed on kelp
Today we went back to the False Bay side of South Africa’s Cape peninsula, where there was more kelp and some big, deep caves.
Pink paperfish waft in the surge
Also on Bikini Reef, a loggerhead turtle feeds and two tomato rockcod seem to be battling over territory.
Black rhino charges
Huge beast shows why it's one of the most feared and respected creatures in the African bushveld.
Lion cubs play
Stalking, pouncing and wrestling are all skills which these young animals will need as they grow up - and the adult males tolerate their antics.
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