At the Columbus Zoo, Part 3…

Are you sick of the zoo yet?  Well, I must say that my daughter Carrie and I never really get sick of looking at animals.  That’s something we have in common.  Her 30^th birthday is today, by the way.

Happy birthday, Number One!  

Carrie wanted badly to see a kiwi, which they have at the Columbus Zoo.  I got no pictures because kiwis are nocturnal animals and their habitat at the zoo is dark.  It took me a while to adjust to the darkness and I didn’t immediately see the kiwis, but Carrie did.  They sure are cool birds and bigger than I thought they were.  But they weren’t the only cool animals we saw in the Australia section of the zoo.

Here’s a Kookaburra and he’s sitting in an old gum tree.  While we were admiring him, there was a young girl singing the kookaburra song, making me wonder how many thousands of times that bird has heard it.

This elegant bird is actually a pigeon so watch out the next time you disparage pigeons.  It’s a Victoria Crowned Pigeon.  He’s actually from New Guinea.

Here’s Jane, she was born at the zoo earlier this year.  She looks like she knows her way around these days.

This isn’t a very good photo, but I like it anyhow.  That bird had just hopped off of the roo’s back.  None of it seemed to phase the bunny.

We had a great time at the Columbus Zoo, but the 90+ degree day finally got the best of us so we left without seeing everything we wanted to see.  But we knew we had to get on the road early the next day and head for home.  One of these days, we may well go back.

At the Columbus Zoo, Part 2…

My daughter Carrie and I spent a day at the zoo in Columbus, Ohio, recently.  After we went through the America section, we moseyed on to the Shores area.

There we saw Caribbean flamingos.  It’s not hard to see how they got to be the kings of lawn ornaments.  They are funny birds to me but the color of the Caribbean flamingo is simply spectacular.

Going along at the zoo, our next stop was at the Humboldt penguin habitat.

We were very lucky to see flamingos and penguins in the wild when we lived in Chile.  The flamingos we saw were in northern Chile in Laguna Chaxa in the Salar de Atacama, which is the most easily accessible flamingo breeding site in the desert.  The Chilean Flamingo is very much like the Caribbean but not quite so pink.  This is an old photo from our trip there.

There is a colony of Humboldt penguins that live on an island off the coastal town of Zapallar, Chile, a place where we spent New Year’s Eve day on the beach.  While we could only see them off in the distance, it was neat to be that close to those cool little birds in the wild. 

Also while in Chile, we also got to see Magellanic penguins on a trip we took to Patagonia.  This is an old photo I took when we were there.  I just wanted to pick up one of those baby birds (with the grey feathers) and hug it.  Of course, I didn’t.  I still consider the experiences of getting to see these wonderful birds in the wild to be some of the best of my life.  What I wouldn’t have given to have had my Nikon d90 with me then!

From the Shores at the zoo, we went on to the Congo.  Columbus Zoo has a lot of primate babies right now and we saw them all.  This is one of two Colobus Monkey babies born at the zoo in May of this year.  Their names are Dr. Leonard Hofstadter and Howard Wolowitz.  Obviously, there’s a fan of Big Bang Theory around there somewhere.

We saw the baby Western Lowland Gorilla, Kamoli, but I didn’t get any good photos of him.  And we saw the baby Bonobo, born in 2012.  No good pics of the baby Bonobo either, but it makes me glad to know that the Columbus Zoo has been successful in Bonobo births.  They have welcomed 13 baby bonobos to the zoo since 1990.  According to the zoo website:  The bonobo is the rarest (great ape) with only 5,000-50,000 living in the equatorial forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).   The primary threat to the endangered bonobo is human behavior, mainly habitat destruction caused by logging.  A secondary threat is the hunting of bonobos for bushmeat for native consumption and for sale to logging companies and markets.  Maybe that’s what this guy is thinking about.

But I was thrilled to get to see this baby Mandrill, Mosi, born on September 9, 2013.  He had us laughing at his acrobatics and then seemed to decide that the leaves he wanted were on the other side of the fence or maybe he was just a little curious about us.  What a face!

Next we were on to Australia...

At the Columbus Zoo, Part 1…

I know that there are people out there who have moral objections to zoos.  I think that they feel it is wrong to capture animals and put them behind bars to be on display for people’s amusement.  In an ideal world where habitat shrinkage is simply a fantasy, where poaching is imaginary and where animals threatened with extinction are part of a make-believe world, I would be with them.  But this is far from an ideal world and this world is not going to change in the foreseeable future.

  I am not so naïve as to believe that all zoos are benign and that all animals in zoos are treated well.  But there are zoos that do treat animals well and do important work in education and conservation.  The zoo in Columbus, Ohio is one of them.

We have been passing Columbus for many years on our way to and from visits to my family in Southern Ohio.  On this trip back to Massachusetts, my daughter Carrie and I decided to stop.

Our first stop in the zoo was in the North America region.  There are three Polar Bears living there.  This is one of the two zoo-born sisters, Aurora or Anana, who lives there.  Her diving technique reminds me of watching Carrie learn to dive back when she was a little kid.

She was diving in to grab what we were told was frozen fruit juice.  It looks to me like she was pretty happy with her catch.

This little girl was fascinated watching the Polar Bear swimming with the fish.  Who knows?  Maybe this experience will spark a love that will encourage her to become a conservationist or an environmentalist in the future.

This is either Brutus or Buckeye, one of two Alaskan Brown Bears orphaned outside of Anchorage, Alaska.  I was impressed with the size of these bears.  They can get to be 700 pounds of pure bear.  It makes me wonder if I wasn’t born the wrong species.

But if you want to talk about size, check this guy out.  Well, actually, I believe this is a girl because she has no antlers, but a Bull Moose can weigh up to 1,200 pounds.  It is not outside the realm of possibility for us to run across a moose here in Massachusetts.  As a matter of fact, they have been spotted in our neighborhood a couple of times over the years we have lived here.  But I have never had the luck to see one in the wild.  This particular moose is one of three orphans rescued in Alaska and sent to the Columbus Zoo in 2011.

Next stop, a trip to the Shores and beyond…