Metropolitan Miscellany

LONDON ZOO

14th April 2013

My time for photography in the past few weeks has been limited by the weather and a heavy schedule of decorating and refurbishing. However as I was in London for the Man Ray show I took the chance to go to the Zoo as the weather was nice and I reckon that there are more subjects per square metre in Regents Park than anywhere else in the UK.

As I have been visiting the Zoo for more than 40 years, I have seen a lot of changes. Most of them have been very much for the better, but I am not convinced by all of them. London Zoo is handicapped by the high costs of its location and by a number of dreadfully bad buildings, which some moron decided should be listed in spite of the fact that they are useless. If I ruled the world, the Casson building (originally the elephant house) would be rubble within a week and anyone who wanted the quaint Tecton penguin pool would have 30 days to remove it before it suffered the same fate. That would give space for some proper monkey enclosures, rather than a few left over from the Sobell pavilion and a couple originally designed for small cats. 

The only modern monkey enclosure is the outdoor one constructed for the group of white-naped mangabeys, which make a good show. This is the youngest infant. I’m sure there was trouble when mother saw that dirty face. All the photos in this blog were taken with my 500mm lens, unless otherwise specified.

 

 The mangabey paterfamilias is an impressive animal.

On the other hand, the old Bird House has been remodelled rather nicely and renamed as the Blackburn Pavilion. I particularly like the large indoor aviary, which has well-balanced spaces for birds and visitors, good planting and a very interesting collection of birds. I think my favourite species is the little blue-crowned lory – there was only one on show and I think it was just completing its moult, but even so it looked stunning. 

I didn’t get any shots of the blue grosbeak and only poor ones of the male sugarbird and the African pygmy geese, but the male splendid sunbird posed for me beautifully. It may seem strange to use a long telephoto lens in such a relatively small space, particularly as most of the birds are quite tame: but I find it helps to isolate the bird in the vegetation. The light is quite good on a nice day, but it is a test of technique and as I use the lowest ISO setting to get full image quality I expect quite a lot of shots to fail due to movement and focus error. On the other hand when everything works well the images can be exciting.

There were more of these sunbirds in the little individual hummingbird flights, together with this nice emerald hummingbird. I think it is the only one on public display in the UK at the moment. This shot was taken with my 105mm macro lens.

I also like the new outdoor aviaries, except that they now have shiny steel mesh which reduces contrast when you shoot through it (unlike black painted wire which can be made to disappear in photos). However it is possible to process the images to get a full tonal range; I used Nikon Capture NX2 to set black and white control points for this shot of a buff-banded rail sunbathing.

 

With care, the 500mm lens also gives good images through the strong wires of the big macaw and cockatoo aviary. I would have liked to shoot the pair of Banksian cockatoos, but they were perched too close to the wire. This green-winged macaw was nibbling the vegetation on the ground, which was much more convenient.

Regular zoo-goers will realise that all the birds I have mentioned are species that you won’t see in other British zoos, except for the macaw. A slightly more common species is the green peafowl seen in the Snowdon Aviary – it is even more handsome than the common blue peafowl. A shot with my 105mm lens - it's not just for macro work.

On the other hand the remodelled Clore Pavilion is not really to my taste. The nocturnal section was once home to a huge range of exotic species, I am happy that they have given the animals more space by doubling up the exhibits – but in my opinion brown rats and chinchillas belong in pet shops, particularly as so many of the old enclosures have been removed or taken off-show. The same could be said about the diurnal exhibits – half of the old enclosures are now off-show. I have mixed feelings about the central rainforest hall, it does give the tamarins and titis a nice space, but it’s not a good way of showing the sloth, tamandua or armadillo. I had a good opportunity to shoot with my 105mm macro when this young emperor tamarin came close to the visitor's balcony.

 

The major new exhibits, Gorilla Kingdom, Penguin Beach and Tiger Territory are all considerable improvements on what went before, although I feel that providing each one with a fluffy toy kiosk is commercial overkill. I got a glimpse of Kumbuka, the male gorilla, who arrived from Paignton a few days before my visit; he was looking around from the bridge over the public corridor, between the gorilla’s off-show area and their indoor dayroom. It was amusing to see Effie and Mjukuu jostling each other as they tried to find the best spot for watching him. Gorillas are sensitive animals and it will take weeks of step-by-step introductions before Kumbuka is swaggering around the enclosure in proper silverback fashion.

I regret that I only had time for a quick trot around the aquarium, but I always take my time in the Reptile House. It’s still the best display of reptiles in the UK and the new amphibian area is a great improvement on the small enclosures it has replaced. Here is a Mallorcan midwife tadpole which is almost ready to leave the water - another macro shot of course.

I must admit that my favourite animals in the zoo are the strange but elegant pig-nosed turtles (also called Fly River turtles). Their aquarium has scratches on the front glass, so I had to do some cloning on the image below, which I took with my 30mm f/1.4 Sigma lens. You can see the frame holding lights above the containers for the side-necked terrapins behind the turtle's tank.

These turtles are very special: they have no close relatives, although they in some ways they resemble marine turtles because they are entirely aquatic, only leaving the water to nest.

I do like the way that the ZSL collections balance the crowd-pleasing animals like tigers and gorillas with strange and beautiful creatures like these.

UPDATE 

Last night  (24th July) ITV broadcast the final episode of their series 'The Zoo'. Shooting for this episode was finished in the weeks after my visit. It showed the adult male magabey shown above: his name is Lucky and he is wild-caught from Ghana. His genes are so important for the future of the species in European zoos that two new females have been added to the group. The main storyline was about the introduction of Kumbuka to the female gorillas, it ended with a sequence when he mated with Mjukuu. Fingers crossed.