Today we went to the zoo and it was my first visit in a number of years. Mum had given me a pair of tickets for my birthday last year and they expire later this month and I didn’t want to waste them.
The London Zoological Society is almost 200 years old. I really like it now as the emphasis is on preservation and captive breeding of species. There is a lot of work going on abroad supporting endangered species as well. It was quite bitter but sunny all day. This was good because it meant there were few visitors but not so good in that a lot of the animals preferred being tucked up in their warm beds and so were difficult to see! It was great to see llamas and alpacas again after our time in South America although these ones were definitely in better conditions than the ones we saw abroad.
The best exhibits included the Amazon space which is a massive covered area with water vapor being pumped in at regular intervals and little tamarins running over our heads on branches. The space included mammals, birds and reptiles all living together. I also liked the ring-tailed lemur ‘aviary’ where you can walk amongst the lemurs jumping around you.
This is Jae-Jae being fed a few ribs. I was literally a few feet away, separated only by a very thick piece of glass. Again it was very difficult to choose a single image from the day so here’s some more on FaceBook. What I really wanted to post was one of the female gorillas who not only is mother to her own 2-month old baby, but also ‘fosters’ a one year old baby who was rejected by her own mother. Unfortunately she stayed in the warm the entire day and there was no artificial light and very low natural light so I ended up shooting at ISO 2,600 so the images are quite grainy.
The good news is that we enjoyed ourselves so much that Colin treated us to annual membership as an early birthday present for me! Hopefully I’ll get to photograph the gorilla babies in warmer weather outside in the months to come.
