Tag: Auckland Zoo

Walking the Cheetah’s

Cheeta 1Auckland Zoo put on some pretty awesome tours. One such is the Cheetah walk. I wasn’t on the walk myself, but with a long lens on the camera I managed to capture some images of these cool cats. I’ll spit up the images between today and tomorrow…for no reason but Im away from the computer at the moment, so have scheduled for a few days.
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White Pink Flamingo

Pink fI think technically these are white flamingo’s – pink ones being a lot pinker. Shot on the Sony Nex at Auckland Zoo.

Interesting fact – sadly earlier this year the oldest believed flamingo died at the Australia zoo – 83 years old!!!

 

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The Tail End

The Tail EndToday we were lucky enough to have a team afternoon with work at the Auckland Zoo. My boss, who somehow fits the time in to also work there gave us an afternoon guided tour full of interesting and fun facts. I brought my Sony Nex along with both the kit lens and the 55-210mm zoom. The 210 stayed on for the day after the first 2 or 3 images. I captured a good range of images I will look through and show at some stage, but, for now, here is the tail end of it all…

 

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Family Pride

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Lions. Those giant cats of nature. Fearsome fighting machines, yet beautiful animals whom are generally fairly social and family, or pride orientated.

The Auckland Zoo is home to a small pride of lions, sitting on top of their little half island (the un-glassed/walled part open to the public is separated by a strip of water). With the poor weather during our visit, it looked as though they were enjoying some of the sun for what was left later in the day. Often this small pride is given interesting toys to play with – things they dont see in the wild. This keeps them inquisitive and playful.

Lions are the second biggest of the cat family (Tigers taking that award). Interestingly, in captivity, Lions can live a little longer than in the wild (10-14 years wild vs 20+ years captive).

With a top speed, for a limited time, of 80kph (50mph), one would not want to be on the receiving end of one of these cats. Luckily they generally dont hunt humans…although thats not to say there are not a number of lion attacks and deaths around the world. Some interesting reading for able googlers could be the Tsavo Man-Eaters.

Lions can be bread with tigers to make Ligers and Tigons, with Leopards to make Leopons…not that any of you will be doing such…

Shot on the Olympus e-500 and cropped in Gimp.

 

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Jungle Den

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABattling on/off rainy weather, we ventured out to the Auckland Zoo today.  Some animals looked to enjoy the rain, others indifferent, and then the rest – the primates all sheltered out of vision, keeping dry.

Armed with the Olympus e-500 I got a number of shots today. Some good, some average. With the larger zoom, it had troubles with focusing today in the average light. Even though todays image is in B&W, I still enjoy the colour from this older four thirds DSLR.

Todays shot, the Chimpanzee enclosure, was captured just after one chimp swung out to check the weather, and then back under the building out of sight and in shelter. Using Gimp I converted to B&W after first tweaking the separate colour channels.

 

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