Twilight and Daylight at Bristol Zoo

LOOKING UP OLD FAVOURITES

19th July 2013

I had not planned that so many of my recent posts would be about zoo visits. Circumstances have made it difficult to find time for a day viewing British wildlife, but I have managed squeeze zoo visits into my schedule.

I did this again on a trip from Manchester to Devon, when I stopped at Bristol Zoo. Unfortunately I had to set my alarm very early because Bristol Zoo is unusual in opening at 9 am, and many of its most interesting animals are in the Twilight World, which actually experiences its twilight hour until 10 am, when the lights go out. As many of the animals are fed in this twilight time, they are easy to see and it is possible to photograph them. But when the house goes dark, it becomes so dark that I find it hard to see much and almost impossible to photograph anything.

This Turkish spiny mouse is one of a large colony at the zoo. It's a species that I haven't managed to photograph before.

My two favourite species in the Twilight World are the aye-aye and the kowari. I saw both aye-ayes, but I couldn't get a decent photo of either. I was luckier with the kowari (or Byrne's marsupial mouse, if you prefer its Sunday best name). This species is a true Australian marsupial, larger than your average mouse with big ears, a pointed nose and bushy tail - but it is actually a carnivore, closer in habits to a weasel than to any rodent, and almost indecently cute to boot. Bristol has the only group in the country; they arrived last year and I see from the zoo's Annual Report that they bred successfully too. Good show!

Photography in low light settings is tricky. I never like to set the ISO too high, this image was taken at 640 ISO, exposure 1/10th sec at f/6.3 and I underexposed by 1 stop so that it doesn't appear to be taken in normal illumination. I used my 105mm Micro-Nikkor with Vibration Reduction and I also held my rubber lens hood against the glass of the cage front to minimise camera shake. Even so, I needed to take a lot of shots to get one with adequate exposure, accurate focus and no significant subject or camera movement. In difficult circumstances it's sensible  take extra shots to improve your chances of getting a decent one.
In processing the shot, I used the colour of the dark grey nest box to set my neutral grey, which got rid of the yellow cast from the lamp over the cage. I also reduced the colour saturation of my original image to produce an image which matched my memory of the scene: of course I know that's a pretty unreliable process, but remember that at night all cats are grey, so in twilight I feel confident that all kowaris are fawnish.

Out in the daylight, I enjoyed walking around the zoo. It's been nearly a year since my previous visit and I was pleased to see some more of my favourite animals. Regular readers will have worked out that I like gorillas and I first visited Bristol to see Daniel, the first gorilla born in England, 40 years ago. Daniel and his father Samson passed away many years ago, although his mother Delilah is still alive in Belfast. The old gorilla house was demolished long ago too; it was replaced by the Ape House, which was converted into the Twilight World. At that time, Bristol sent the chimps and orangs away and moved the gorillas into new accommodation that was previously the elephant house. 

The gorillas have done so well that they are now extending and modernising this building. The indoor part is off-show during the building work, so I didn't see the gorillas until their 12.30 pm feed because they stayed out of the July sunshine until lunch was served. Even then it was difficult to get photos because the gorillas wanted to stay in the shade and they all went back inside as soon as they could - except for old Salome and her son. Salome relaxed in her favourite shady spot in the shelter, while little Kukena found a carrot that the others had missed and settle down to eat it. Kukena will be two in September and is growing well, he can now climb the old tree on the gorilla's island and he is happy to be out of Salome's sight for a few minutes. I needed my 500mm lens for this shot.

Finally, from the Reptile house, a colourful panther chameleon from Madagascar and a plainer common chameleon from southern Europe, showing some of the extraordinary adaptations of these strange lizards. I used the 105mm macro lens again.