A Quick Visit to Paignton

JUST A FEW SUBJECTS THIS TIME

25th June 2013

I didn't have a full day on my latest visit to Paignton, but I wanted to see the baby Bornean orang utan born to Mali on the 11th of April (two weeks after my previous visit).

Unfortunately Mali was on the large orang island in the morning and she spent the time so deep in the vegetation that I could hardly see her, let alone her daughter. Fortunately I was on the viewpoint when the keepers called her back to the house for a snack of fruit. She climbed up to the entrance door (which was locked so that another orang could use the indoor area). She sat and enjoyed her titbits between the plastic draught excluders, which gave me the opportunity for an extended sequence.

My original photos showed a lot of the plastic screens. I tried cropping to a square format, but I liked the facial expressions of both apes so much that I thought a pair of portrait crops might work better. This took a little more work in Photoshop, but I like the results.

You just have to love baby orangs! I am also very pleased that Mali is such a good mother.

My other subject was the old short-beaked echidna, the only monotreme in the UK. He was taking a constitutional before his afternoon feed. The dappled sunlight in his enclosure was very attractive, but a photographic nightmare. The old guy trundles around his enclosure on his habitual paths and it doesn't look as if he is moving fast: but any photos shot at less than 1/200 s are quite blurred, unless you can catch a rare still moment. Neither of these shots are perfect, but both show him quite well.

I just had time to catch the gorilla keeper's talk at 2.30pm. There were so many people around her that I couldn't use my camera. But I walked a few metres further and spotted my favourite gorilla waiting on one side in the shade. He was keeping out of trouble as he is the youngest male in the group.
Matadi is the great great grandson of Stefi and Achilla, the first gorillas to breed in Europe. I photographed them at Basel forty years ago. I have images of all the gorillas in Matadi's family tree since then, except for his late father Sekondi, who always disappeared when I had my camera. Matadi is now a well grown blackback and I don't think it will be too long before he is moved to a zoo where he can meet some females as he is not closely related to any other gorillas in the Studbook so his genes are important.

Another Chester Visit

A HAPPY WANDERER

16th June 2013

When I visit a zoo, I may have a specific target in mind, but often I just wander round without much planning: on the other hand, as I visit my favourite zoos quite frequently I do know a little about the most likely times and places for photo opportunities. However you should always be prepared to learn by watching for new opportunities.
Sunday June 16th did not have a brilliant weather forecast, but cloudy skies can work well for photography and I hoped to get a chance to see the new tiger cubs born on the 3rd of June.
I always start at the Islands in Danger building, as my favourite Boelen's pythons are most active early in the day. After working out with a few fairly unsuccessful shots, I made my way to the tigers before things got too busy.
Kirana, the female Sumatran tiger, had taken given birth in her indoor quarters; but she had followed the pattern of her previous two litters and moved the cubs to her favourite den, under a wooden platform quite near to both the ground level viewing window and the high level viewing platform for visitors. She seems content to let Fabi, their father, stay in the same enclosure provided that he soesn't get too close to the den.  Unfortunately being quite near to visitors does not mean that the cubs are easy to see. The angle of the platform and the thick planting of the enclosure means that viewers and photographers are very restricted in what they can see. I was lucky to get a few shots with my 500mm as one of the cubs was crawling at the edge of the den while Kirana was feeding the other. This is the best one.
  

I returned to the tiger enclosure several times during the day, without seeing the cubs again.
On my last visit I saw the two banteng cows in their new enclosure near the old entrance (the former wapiti/bongo paddock). This time they had managed to move the bull in with them and both cows had given birth to calves as well. The bull is an impressive animal.

Both the Javan banteng and the Sumatran tigers are due to be moved into the new Islands exhibit which is now being developed south-east of the current zoo boundary.
The zoo has had a pair of Linne's two-toed sloths in the Jaguar house for about a year now. I haven't been really happy with any of my sloth photos so far, but I keep trying. The light indoors is not really good enough to use my 500mm lens, but I tried as an experiment: although this shot needed some work with Capture NX2 and Photoshop and there are some out of focus twigs which degrade the image, I like the pose and the countershading - so I rate it a qualified success.

At Realm of the Red Ape (generally known as RotRA) the Sumatran orang utans were not very visible, but the Bornean group was showing well. They had just been given access to their second outdoor cage, which had been temporarily occupied by the small-clawed otters. This had allowed the shrubs to put on some growth, so the orangs had plenty of pruning to do - they are remarkably destructive. Old Martha was happily consuming a small bamboo - she is about 48 and one of the oldest orangs in the UK. She sometimes appears rather stiff, but she is still active and climbs well.

Martha lives with her daughters Sarikei and Leia, and her 4 year old grandchildren Iznee and Latifah who are delightfully active. Tuan, the adult male cannot be mixed with the group and he is normally kept off-show. At the moment Chester are also boarding Blackpool Zoo's group of Bornean orangs while their house is being rebuilt, but they have also been off-show when I have visited. I was pleased to take the portrait of Martha, although I wish it were a little sharper; the one of Latifah below is better, because I was able to get the lens perpendicular to the window that I was shooting through.


There is no problem with glass at the Chimp Island, a group were close to the moat near RotRA. This is Carlos, a subadult male who is one of the youngest in the group.



When I was a boy, there were three ape islands just covered with grass. Now there is one large island  furnished with telegraph poles and nets for climbing and thickly planted with shrubs. This doesn't just look attractive, it gives the chimps opportunities to join up in small groups or to stay away from each other and to find interesting plants to investigate. This older lady, who might be Heidi (but I'm not sure), was enjoying the flowers and young leaves of a wild rose.


My path went from the chimps, past the macaws and through the Tropical House. I always check the tuataras near the door by the main entrance. They are great rarities in zoos, and although they not particularly spectacular or active, they are fascinating. One of the females was posing at the mouth of her burrow.

In the afternoon the light is favourable in the Tsavo aviary. The black-headed village weavers are the most obvious birds. The males are building their nests, displaying or destroying other nests. Females are less flamboyant but they watch what is going on and flutter their wings to encourage males which catch their eyes.

The Indian rhinos were active as I headed back to the tigers again. Asha was in the pool and the bull Beni was showing off close to the ditch. I switched to my 105mm lens for this shot as he sampled a few willow leaves. Impressive teeth!

Finally as the zoo went quiet at closing time, I did a quick tour of the aquarium. I have never seen one of the young Annam leaf turtles out of the water before, so I was very pleased to catch this pose which was perfect for my 105mm macro. The zoo has done well with this species and several other very rare terrapins, most of which are off-show. The zoo is planning a new turtle exhibit too.
 

A Double Day

COOMBES VALLEY RSPB & BLACKBROOK ZOO

8th June 2013

I don’t often visit a nature reserve and a zoo on the same day, but these two places are both worth visiting and they are only a couple of miles apart in the Staffordshire moorlands south of Leek.

Coombes Valley is fairly steep-sided, with a stream at the bottom. The main habitat is oak woodland, with some meadow and pasture. It’s not one of the RSPB honeypot reserves with a shop and a restaurant and lots of hides. There is a car park and an information centre, usually unmanned, plus a drinks machine and toilets. But there are trails and seats in strategic places, all shown on the map in the nice information leaflet.

I had visited once before, so I knew that my opportunities for photography would be limited. Woodland in early summer is full of the sounds of birds, but it is hard to see any of them. I decided not to wander through the woods getting frustrated, but to sit on a seat beside the stream and wait to see what happened. I saw grey wagtails feeding 30 metres away where the stream disappeared round a bend and a pair of jays in a tree half way up the slope. Nothing was close enough to photograph. But it is always pleasant to sit in the sun on a nice day and my patience was rewarded when a pied flycatcher appeared in one of the oak trees in front of my seat.

The little male behaved just as the bird books say - fidgety, unpredictable, mostly in the branches of the oaks, but coming down to the ground occasionally. The bird came and went, often half-hidden in the leaves, rarely still for long. I knew my first photos of this tricky target were poor, but I gradually got rather better opportunities. I was hoping that the bird would eventually choose a perch on the outer part of the tree in the sun, because I was struggling with exposure.

Another photographer came out of the undergrowth and joined me, but the session was cut short when a warden arrived with a group of parents and children. She politely explained that they were going to start pond dipping (or stream dipping to be exact). We had to move on. In another 20 minutes I might have got a better shot of the flycatcher and possibly of a wagtail too. This is my best effort, but it's not really up to standard. I saw nothing of note on my way back to the car park.

Blackbrook Zoo is mainly a bird collection, concentrating on waterfowl, ibis and cranes. They have a few mammals too. The site is quite exposed and the zoo had problems in the bad winter this winter. Several aviaries have been demolished or are under repair and there are still problems with the Tropical House and the toilets – but there were plenty of decent portaloos on site.

On my previous visits I had just used my 300mm lens, but this time I used my 500mm, so I got some nice portraits. As it happened, several of my best shots were of ibises. Here are a glossy ibis bathing, a buff-necked ibis and the unusual hadada

A cute Orinocco gosling

Hume's bar-tailed pheasant 

Ypecaha wood rail

Florida sandhill crane

Finally an endangered mammal, Visayan warty boar