Good Friday

[plonq]

The weather was sunny and (relatively) nice yesterday, and the streets are finally (mostly) clear of ice, so we decided to take the new car out for a spin to shake off some of the dust that accumulated over the winter. We had packed our cameras along on the trip with the stated purpose of capturing some shots of the river, but as we cruised up through the west end of town atara suddenly tossed out the idea of taking in the zoo. I was a bit lukewarm toward the idea, but her insistence and the bright sunny weather convinced me to agree.

The cooler weather, and the fact that it was about an hour or so before feeding time meant that the critters were more active than usual.

You had to know I would get at least one picture of the snow leopards...



Hello, bear here. My internal clock is saying something about food, so I'll just wait here then shall I?

One might be excused if they mistake this for a polar bear on first glance. On closer inspection, however, it is pretty obvious that this is actually a black bear.

They have a pair of endangered sea eagles that they brought in last year. While one of them was sitting placidly on a perch, enjoying the sun, the other was apparently plotting his escape. Either that, or he was very stupid and couldn't grasp the idea of cause and effect (I fly into the fence and I bounce off). Here he is eyeing the fence for a potential weakness to exploit. Moments later he took wing and threw himself bodily at the fence in an attempt to break through.

Hey you, with the camera, a little help here?

This is one of those shots that looked better in person than it does in a picture. Cameras have this marvellous way of making things disappear against the background.

This was the picture that I didn't expect to work, but it turned out much better than the previous one. That just goes to show that I have a few things to learn about composition.

I have never seen these little guys when they are not little perpetual motion machines of activity.

They're not anywhere near endangered - heck, they're even native to this part of the world during the summer months. I just thought it was kind of cute the way this little guy was poking his beak through the mesh.

Owls are a surprisingly sedentary bird.

This guy had been up to some amusing antics in the snow prior to this picture, but the best shot of the lot turned out to be him walking along just being a bear.

Comments

[aerofox.livejournal.com]

Nice pictures!

I take it the two of the Snow Leopard are in color?
Just that there wasn't anything colorful in the picture?

[plonq.livejournal.com]

The originals were in colour, but I converted them to B&W. Doing that made the fence in the foreground stand out a lot less. You can still see it in the shots, but now it looks more like a trick of the lighting than like chain links in the foreground.

Also the wall behind him was a gaudy green colour. >.< It looks much better in B&W.

[rrwolf.livejournal.com]

Nice pictures.

[kfops.livejournal.com]

You ever notice that arctic animals (both the owls and foxes) just look like Anime characters when their eyes are closed. They're just so damn pleased looking!

Plus, great photos!