Mainly Miniature Monkeys

MORE FROM CHESTER ZOO

16th July 2013

I went back to Chester Zoo hoping to see the baby Indian rhino, but I had no luck with that.
I was also hoping to photograph the black lion tamarins - I had good views of them indoors on my first visit to the Miniature Monkeys exhibits, but the Eastern pygmy marmosets in the outdoor part of the same enclosure gave me marvellous photo opportunities.

The outdoor enclosures in Miniature Monkeys are completely open and thickly planted with shrubs and mature trees. These are carefully pruned so that the marmosets and tamarins cannot jump over the barriers which have smooth inner surfaces so that they cannot be climbed either. The pygmy marmosets are the smallest monkeys, they are cryptically coloured and they creep around the enclosure - quite different from the agility and dash of the other species of marmosets and tamarins. This makes them hard to see and they also spend a lot of time looking around as if they are checking for predators. Several years ago I watched a kestrel eating a mouse in an oak tree in Miniature Monkeys, it then flew across the path and inspected the floor of the other enclosure obviously looking for another rodent. This happened before the pygmy marmosets arrived, but I have no doubt that a kestrel would be capable of catching an unwary pygmy marmoset - so it is as well that this species is so cautious.
The individual above was sitting quietly in a patch of sunlight at the top of a shrub: a perfect pose for my 500 mm. A different one gave me a sequence as it crept along a dead branch, it then moved across to live branch and started to bite the bark to feed on the sap, which is part of the natural diet of marmosets. You can see more bite marks on this branch.

There was also plenty of action at the giant otter's pool. You can see that the two cubs are still significantly smaller than the adults when they are all out of the water; but in the water it's much harder to tell. I think this shot shows the two cubs in front of their mother 'Icana'. I love the water lilies in their pool, they look very attractive and the otters seem to like them too.

In Realm of the Red Ape, the light was very good in the aviary of the Timor sparrows and scissor-billed starlings, but this male splendid fruit dove hogged the spotlight. I used my 105mm macro lens for this image (and for the photos below too).












Back at Miniature Monkeys, I finally managed a nice shot of a black lion tamarin (or golden-rumped lion tamarin if you prefer). This pair are the only specimens in mainland UK and although I am glad to see them on show, I am also disappointed because they been kept off-show at Chester for a couple of years in the hope that privacy would let them breed. Their move to Miniature Monkeys is a sign that the zoo has virtually given up hope of success. I have written before about this species; it is the most sensitive and delicate of the three species of lion tamarins in zoos, although this pair seemed to have taken their move well. I am afraid that in few years time they may have disappeared from zoos in Britain and perhaps in Europe too.
I am told that these animals are now using the outdoor enclosure too, so I will try to take more photos of them soon.
Finally a photo of black rhino calf 'Embu' at two and a half weeks old, with his mother 'Zuri'. They were out in the paddock, but the grass was too long for decent photos of the little guy. I took this one as the keepers enticed 'Zuri' back into the yard with some pellets before taking them in for the night. The background is pretty horrible, but it shows how much the calf had grown since my previous visit.

Touring Chester Zoo with a Curator

MANAGING A MODERN ZOO

6th July 2013

On Saturday 6th I toured Chester Zoo with a party of people from the ZooChat website in the company of the Curator of Mammals, Mr Tim Rowlands. We have had several of these tours over the past few years, Tim or one of the other curators gives us some insight into the working of the zoo and we make donations to one of the zoo's projects. We have a few ground rules: the zoo never announces animal pregnancies* and we understand that negotiations about the transfer of animals between zoos are sometimes too delicate to be discussed. On the other hand we sometimes see off-show areas of the zoo and occasionally we learn an interesting piece of news off-the-record. I won't break any confidences here of course, but I can describe what I have learned about the way this large and successful zoo is managed.

I think I can best explain this by writing about the zoo’s Eastern black rhinos. We started our tour with these animals and Tim introduced us to one of the team of rhino keepers. I remember the first pair of black rhinos at Chester more than 50 years ago: they bred successfully in the old house which is hardly changed, except that it is now off-show. But for many years the rhinos at the zoo did not breed at all. In spite of their size and proverbially thick skins, black rhinos are sensitive creatures. They have individual personalities and preferences. In the past few years, better management, including testing of the hormone levels in the dung of the females, has helped the keepers to arrange the mixing of males and females producing better breeding results. Tim was formerly a keeper on the giraffe section, so he knows how important skilled keepers are for getting the details right.

Chester now holds 2 bulls and 5 cows of this highly endangered species and 3 calves have been born since last October. Port Lympne Animal Park in Kent has a similarly sized herd and recently Chester sent the young bull ‘Asani’ there. ‘Asani’ is the number one son of Chester’s bull ‘Sammy’ who was bred in Japan and is unrelated to the other rhinos in the European studbook, so this move will help to widen the gene pool.

There are four interconnected rhino paddocks and one house on-show in the zoo, with three more paddocks and three houses off-show (although the paddocks can be seen from the entrance road and the car park). Recently simple shelters have been built in several of the paddocks to provide shade allowing the rhinos to spend more time out of doors, further improvements are planned. 

In the Tsavo house we saw female ‘Zuri’, who was born at Paignton Zoo, with her week old bull calf sired by ‘Magadi’. All baby animals are cute, but I think a baby rhino’s combination of sturdiness and vulnerability is particularly charming – although they grow into tough muscular beasts remarkably quickly. I love the ring on his face where his second horn will grow. The calf has been named ‘Embu’ since our visit. The lighting inside the house is always poor and I knew that most of my photos would be blurred even with a high ISO setting. I chose the low value of 200 ISO and took lots of images, resting the camera on the barrier and trusting the VR feature (vibration reduction) on my 105mm lens, to produce a decent shot when the calf was still for a moment. I have done some colour correction to compensate for the mixed lighting, but I haven’t quite got rid of the pink cast in the calf’s shadow.

Each species in the zoo has its own special requirements, although only a few are as demanding as the black rhinos. Some species do so well that it becomes hard to find suitable homes for surplus stock, other species run into problems and in the end the curator has to decide the best way to solve them. As we walked around the zoo we talked about the animals and the exhibits as we passed them. When we stopped between the oryx and the zebra we asked Tim about progress with the Islands development. From this point you can see the newt-proof fence surrounding the Islands site, which is over 110 000 square metres, almost all outside the current area of the zoo. The first step has been the capture of a large number of great crested newts which have been released into other areas of the zoo's land, one part is being developed as a nature reserve. This is a legal requirement, but the zoo must also be seen to set a good example by protecting this locally endangered species. It also shows the foresight of the zoo’s founder, George Mottershead, who bought up a lot of land along the zoo’s original boundaries, providing space for future projects.

Work will soon start on site to provide services (electricity, water and drainage) before building begins. There will be a large Indonesian house, holding the zoo’s Sumatran orang utans plus birds and macaques, a smaller house for Komodo dragons, with further mammal exhibits and aviaries. There will also be a restaurant, a shop and other visitor facilities. Landscaping, planting and the introduction of the animals is due to be completed around Easter 2015. The total cost will be around £30 million, so the zoo’s managers have been checking and rechecking the plans. As I have mentioned before, Tim has already started to bring in new stock for some of the Islands exhibits, so far the banteng and a Malayan tapir have arrived. I am sure that the other curators will be planning their exhibits too.

* As I was drafting this, Chester Zoo announced that shortly before midnight on 7th July (the day after our tour), 'Asha' the female Indian rhino gave birth to her first calf. Tim did not give us the slightest hint of this.

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

A Halcyon Day

LEIGHTON MOSS – AVOCETS, HARRIER ACTION, A MAD LAPWING AND A MAGIC MOMENT

25th May 2013

May has been a busy month and I have had little time for photography. But I took my opportunity on Saturday as the weather forecast was good and I got out of bed early enough to reach Leighton Moss RSPB reserve before 8am.

I followed the strategy described in my previous blog about Leighton Moss. I start  at the Eric Morecambe hide because it gets the best light first. I managed some shots of avocets feeding. The viewpoint of the hide is rather high, but this enhances the view of the reflections.

The islands in the scrape had lots of nests. I think most of the black-headed gulls were on eggs and I spotted an incubating oystercatcher too. A few of the avocets had hatched their chicks, but they were still quite small and too far away for decent pictures. I tried shooting the gulls and avocets mobbing a young herring gull; I got one shot of a black-headed gull hovering just over the herring gull’s head, but it was facing in the wrong direction. 

At the main reserve I got good views of a marsh harrier male hunting over the reeds as I walked across the causeway. I was even luckier when I reached the Lower hide, as I saw the male bring in prey and one the females came off her nest. I had never seen a food pass before, but I managed to get a distant shot as the female came for her meal.This shot and the next one are quite heavily cropped.

I wish I could say that this was the first shot of a sequence, but I lost focus on the birds so the other shots were useless. Distant shots of the birds against a fairly high contrast background were too tough a test for the autofocus of my Nikon D300s.

The female harrier returned to her nest to feed, the male cruised around for a while, before perching. There are currently 2 males and 6 females nesting at Leighton Moss, so each male is hunting for four: of course they will be even busier when the chicks hatch as the females cannot hunt until the chicks are large enough to be left on their own. However the male couldn’t rest for long, he had to soar up to chase a buzzard away. The birds were too high to be easy to photograph, but the dogfight was quite dramatic. Both birds have similar wingspans, but the harrier was much lighter and more manoeuvrable than the powerful buzzard, so it keep high, threatening to strike down, and forcing the buzzard to roll or turn to strike upwards. Actually I don’t think they touched, but they certainly came close.

I ended my visit at the Grisedale hide. There was a mad male lapwing trying to impress a female with wild display flights and lots of ‘peewit’ calls.  Fortunately he had a predictable flight pattern; the slow section was just after take-off from a boggy patch, so I prefocussed in front of it and managed an action shot.

Another marsh harrier came over, I think it was a young male showing the first traces of grey plumage. I don’t think it was one of the breeding birds, but it was hunting and it made a kill in the reeds after I had taken a few shots.

Why was it a halcyon day?

I have left the best until last: halcyon is the Greek name for the kingfisher. At the Allen hide, I was hoping that an avocet chick south of the hide would come close enough to photograph, but I noticed a kingfisher at the other end of the scrape. I was not surprised because I have had glimpses around the scrapes before and the pools and channels on the other side of the railway line behind the hides look like possible kingfisher habitat too.
The avocet chick decided to have a rest, so I went to the other end of the hide to watch the kingfisher fishing off the blue plastic posts of the electric fence around the scrape (which was installed to protect the avocets). When it came nearer to the end of the hide, I took a few photos, rather distant but better than I had managed before, then the bird suddenly dived for a fish. Fortunately for me, it missed. Then it flew towards the hide, perching on the fence post nearest to my window. I pushed the focus button and held my breath. It seemed to take several minutes before the image popped into focus in my viewfinder, but what I saw was breathtaking. The kingfisher was gleaming because it was directly down sun from my camera position. I took 47 photos in 43 seconds. Many of them are almost identical, but this is one of the best: the blue plastic post is not the most photogenic of perches - but I was just delighted by this little male.

White plus Black and Grey

LITTLE EGRETS & JACKDAWS AT SLIMBRIDGE

1st May 2013

Rather later than intended, here are the photos I took at Slimbridge before Monty the crane appeared.

I had excellent views of little egrets hunting in front of the Martin Smith and Robbie Garnett hides. It was not so long ago that seeing a little egret in full breeding plumage would have sent any British birder into paroxysms of joy. It is too easy to become dismissive about these beautiful birds now that they have become so familiar. They are very elegant all the year round, but in spring their plumes or aigrettes add an extra dimension.

As I have written  before, water bird shots look good when there is a reflection to offer a double view of the subject and this also shows the quality of the water surface; the photo below demonstrates the energetic way that egrets shuffle their feet to disturb their prey, even when the water is deeper than their ideal. With pure white birds, you get a marvellous bonus when ripples are reflected from their breasts.

The birds in front of the Robbie Garnett hide were so close that I couldn't include the main reflection - although of course I was using the 700mm combination. I think there are three different egrets in these photos, they don't seem to take much notice of each other when they are foraging. Watching through the viewfinder I thought the bird below was warning off another, but when I looked around there was no other bird nearby.

You certainly don't have to watch a hungry egret for too long before you see it make a catch; they are remarkably efficient hunters of small fishes. These birds were catching sticklebacks. You can see the stickleback's spines in the photo below, but they didn't save the fish from the egret.

The traditional problem with shooting white birds in bright sunlight is overexposure, resulting in loosing highlight detail ('blowing the highlights' in photographic jargon). The conditions for these shots were a stiff test, but I think I have avoided this problem: I always set my D300s to underexpose by 2/3 stop compared to the factory setting, which usually avoids the problem, particularly as I always try to use the minimum ISO setting (200) - but a couple of test shots and a histogram check are still advisable. I also shoot 14-bit NEF (Nikon Raw) images, so that I have a little extra safety margin available when I am processing a 12-bit image. I use Capture NX2 because it is matched to NEF images and I like to set white and black control points on my images to get a full tonal range.

I'm quite sure that jackdaws recognise that inside the boundaries of Slimbridge, people are no threat, so they are very relaxed when close to the hides. Jackdaws are favourites of mine: adaptable, agile, intelligent, sociable and wonderful fliers. This bird was having a rest after raiding the feeders opposite the Robbie Garnett hide, I think (s)he felt that the seed mix was too good for the goldfinches and great tits.

This bird was hunting insects in the grass right in front of the Martin Smith hide.The problem with these photos is that there is no true white point in them (even the highlight in the eye of the bird below is distinctly blue). I find it much harder to process these shots by setting a black point and finding a true neutral grey point and adjusting its brightness.