Picspam: Zoo Nuremberg, 1 August 2013
So, yesterday I spent at the zoo in Nuremberg which is best known for its polar bears (little Flocke was born here a few years back) and dolphins. It's quite a big zoo where you can easily spend 6+ hours. A few enclosures are currently closed for rebuilding, amongst them the wolf enclosure (it will be turned into a lynx enclosure) and sadly also the owl enclosures - except for the the Ural owl enclosure which happens to be situated with the other day birds of prey such as eagle and harpy rather than the other owls. The good news is that once the owl enclosure has been rebuilt the zoo will have Great Grey Owls, woo hoo!
The cutest animal of the day was definitely the red panda. When I happened to pass by his enclosure for the first time he was pretty active, looking for a good spot in the tree. When I passed it again later the keeper had just brought fresh leaves so both the male and the female appeared at the table. There were a lot of ooohs and aaahs all around, for sure :)
The polar bear enclosures are really impressive, but still too small, I am afraid. I cannot find any other explanation for both polar bears having tics, otherwise. One polar bear walked the same small route by the water again and again, taking every step exactly as it had in the previous run, and the other stood by the entrance to the rear enclosure, looking at something in the trees (there was nothing) and baring its teeth every five minutes. I am really torn about polar bear keeping. You can never build big enough enclosures for animals who are by nature used to having thousands and thousands of miles to roam, and yet - the polar bear is such an endangered species that the only way to preserve them is to keep them at zoos. It's a vicious circle, really.
The sea lions and dolphins are presented in a 30-minute show five times a day, the rest of the day they have a pretty big area to roam free. Some animal rights activists still think it's too small, but the Dolphin Laguna as it is called is really spacious, and the animals all look well, and obviously had fun doing the presentation. I hope you'll be able to see in the photos.
So now, without further ado, here's the photographs I took. Apologies for them being a bit out of order - I had two cameras with me - my old Pentax Optio 550 which is perfect for zooming and photographing unmoving objects, and my new Pentax Q which is brilliant for taking photographs of moving objects due to its serial function, and its vast variety of different automatic settings and the fact that I can use all sorts of filters with it. So yeah, sorry for that.
Anyway, enjoy the photographs and remember:
- All photographs taken by yours truly
- Click for full resolution
- Feel free to take them for private use
- If used for artistic means, credit must be given to either little___hobbit or Katja Eichner
- If shared elsewhere please to not hotlink!
The cutest animal of the day was definitely the red panda. When I happened to pass by his enclosure for the first time he was pretty active, looking for a good spot in the tree. When I passed it again later the keeper had just brought fresh leaves so both the male and the female appeared at the table. There were a lot of ooohs and aaahs all around, for sure :)
The polar bear enclosures are really impressive, but still too small, I am afraid. I cannot find any other explanation for both polar bears having tics, otherwise. One polar bear walked the same small route by the water again and again, taking every step exactly as it had in the previous run, and the other stood by the entrance to the rear enclosure, looking at something in the trees (there was nothing) and baring its teeth every five minutes. I am really torn about polar bear keeping. You can never build big enough enclosures for animals who are by nature used to having thousands and thousands of miles to roam, and yet - the polar bear is such an endangered species that the only way to preserve them is to keep them at zoos. It's a vicious circle, really.
The sea lions and dolphins are presented in a 30-minute show five times a day, the rest of the day they have a pretty big area to roam free. Some animal rights activists still think it's too small, but the Dolphin Laguna as it is called is really spacious, and the animals all look well, and obviously had fun doing the presentation. I hope you'll be able to see in the photos.
So now, without further ado, here's the photographs I took. Apologies for them being a bit out of order - I had two cameras with me - my old Pentax Optio 550 which is perfect for zooming and photographing unmoving objects, and my new Pentax Q which is brilliant for taking photographs of moving objects due to its serial function, and its vast variety of different automatic settings and the fact that I can use all sorts of filters with it. So yeah, sorry for that.
Anyway, enjoy the photographs and remember:
- All photographs taken by yours truly
- Click for full resolution
- Feel free to take them for private use
- If used for artistic means, credit must be given to either little___hobbit or Katja Eichner
- If shared elsewhere please to not hotlink!
