A day at the Zoo

Some vouchers which needed using by the end of March and a (somewhat) sunny day during half-term meant a trip out to the zoo. Unfortunately, the only decent day weather wise was today, when Sarah had a history revision session at school, so she wasn't able to come - but the other two kiddos and I headed up to Camden to spend the day at the zoo.  I made them pose here on the bridge across Regent's Canal, because I have a similar picture from years ago and I wanted to contrast them...  If you follow this link, you can actually see a couple of them!

Olivia also wanted to play a bit with her camera (technically, not hers, it belongs to the whole family - it was a hand-me-down this summer from our friend Barbara who has a better one now - took a while to get a lens for it as I originally thought I still had a compatible one from my old (non-digital) SLR, but as it happens, I didn't. Kindly, Barbara sent us a lens for Christmas, so we're good to go now. This was the first chance Olivia has had to have a really good play with it - there's still a lot to learn, but we're getting there.

I took some photos of animals at the zoo, but I also photographed other things, like the canal boats outside the zoo, on the way there - and lots of plants - what can I say? I like taking photos of plants and trees. However, I'll spare you and only post a few selected photos of either animals or non-animals...

I liked the contrast of these two birds - the noble bird of prey lording it over everyone and a little opportunist sparrow (who was in a monkey cage, scrounging for dropped bits and pieces)...

And of course, these birds are yet another contrast!  This rock hopper penguin seemed really pleased the sun was out - he didn't move from this spot for the entire 20 minutes or so we sat and listened to a talk about penguins.

Love the way ferns unfold!

This butterfly chrysalis was amazing - almost looked like metal, it was so shiny.

Here she is again, trying to photograph some birds...

such as this one!

And yep, more plants from me.  I particularly liked the shadow against the wall in the bottom photo as it shows that it was sunny, for once!

This is a very large statue of a polar bear.

We watched a couple of gorillas - they weren't doing much, though - I think they were watching all the foolish people on the other side of the glass...

Managed to catch a glimpse of a tiger in the new tiger habitat, but only a glimpse - the new habitat looks nice though. 

Perhaps the best bit was watching the giraffes have a snack - they were really animated and quite hard to photograph as they kept moving around - but it was fun to watch them grab carrots from some people's hands, with their long tongues - and then, once the carrots were gone, lean down and lick the people, just in case they'd missed something!