Citing Sites with Sights

The somewhat blurry image below was screen-captured the other morning from the WildCam Africa webcam at the Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana. It is so dry there right now that it has a very familiar look to New Mexico eyes, but the sounds you hear through the webcam's audio are

entirely nothing-like-here! We had some even better images--a baby elephant nuzzling under its mother as they stood in the pond, a crocodile rushing from the bank down into the water--but they went to electron heaven. You have to be patient to catch wildlife on the cam--but watching a wild elephant spray water from its trunk is certainly worth investing some waiting. Thanks to National Geographic for this new online toy.
       Meanwhile, it is the height of the season for salmon in Johnstone Strait, and therefore for viewing the orca there. Patience while visiting the Orca-Live site is also likely to be rewarded with sights and sounds from the wild world.
       NASA wants to show us the view 'Spirit' found when it finally arrived at the rim of the hill on Mars that it had been climbing for months (Science News story about the event), and some fascinating new images from Saturn's rings taken by Cassini (take a close look at the bigger version of the one called 'Passing Lane'. A graceful demonstration of physics in motion.)
       Alas, there don't seem to be any pictures available from the release of three more California condors to the wild in Pinnacles National Monument. There's supposed to gonna be a condor cam. Hope they hurry up with it. There's a nice pic of the release site, but no cam.
       For both Orca-Live and WildCam Africa you need to have RealPlayer installed. You can watch them on the library's public internet machines.