Super Summer Weekend #1

I'm back!  So much of my time goes to the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves Facebook page.  If you haven't liked it, please do.  We provide some pretty awesome comment, if I do say so myself.  It's right here:  https://www.facebook.com/ohiodnap

So, to start getting back into the swing of things, how about a look into our first super summer weekend?  Strawberry picking at Legend Hills, Velvet ice cream at Ye Old Mill, and a rather engaging trip to the Heart of Africa courtesy of the Columbus Zoo.

The boys are getting big, aren't they!  Four and six.. Drop me a comment, I'd love to hear from you.  And hey, super summer weekend #2 is about to begin.

-Tom

Amur Leopard - Columbus Zoo

Today we made a family trip to the Columbus Zoo.  For me, it was the first in a few months, since we visited the new Africa area.  Being a cold, blustery November day, we checked out the indoor exhibits.  Rarely do we ever go inside the Asia quest area.  To my surprise, we found two Amur leopards (Panthera pardus orientalis) in an area formerly occupied by sun bears.  I wasn't familiar with the leopard species, which is extremely rare in the wild.  According to the World Wildlife Fund, only 30 or so individuals still exist in far east Russia.  They apparently share a home with the Amur tiger in the Primorye region of Russia.  My guess is that these cats are familiar with one of our nasty invasive species, the Amur honeysuckle.  If you're looking for an exciting read this winter, and want to learn more about the Amur region and its tigers, take a look at John Vaillant's "The Tiger".  It's quite a riveting natural history read.

-Tom

Mexican Gray Wolf

Mexican Gray Wolf - Columbus Zoo & Aquarium - Powell, Ohio

I was scrolling through my lightroom catalog, browsing for images of State Nature Preserves to keyword properly (for the day job) and this photo of the Mexican gray wolf subspecies caught my eye.  The RAW file was flat as flat could be, due to a smudged and dingy piece of glass that I was shooting through. But I thought the pose was just too good to let it sit on my hard drive.

From my brief bit of research on this subspecies- they were exterminated in the wild, and today, are extremely rare after reintroductions via captive breeding programs.  I typically focus my writings on bugs and birds- things that still exist in a landscape long after people arrive- but wolves are one of those things that would have been roaming the forests of Worthington several centuries earlier. Now, the closest I can get to one is the Mexican subspecies at our local zoo.

-Tom

Kissin' Carp

Common carp, Cyprinus carpio

It's pretty hard to believe that the United States didn't have any common carp prying our natural waters before their introduction in 1831.  They're probably our most ubiquitous fish here in Ohio- there aren't many water bodies of significant size that don't have common carp.  I've never eaten them, but they are quite popular in other parts of the world.   They were even eaten here in the US, but we have seemed to have lost our taste for them- I wonder why?  It is it perhaps because they are able to persist in the nastiest of our waterways?  

These fish were swarming yesterday in the O'shaugnessy Reservoir at the Columbus Zoo.  A dad had brought a loaf of white bread, and his kids had a blast feeding these huge fish.  Weston watched intently, thinking they were just another part of the zoo spectacle, not realizing that these fish don't live in a tank.

Tom

G'day Mate

I had the fortune to travel to Australia with Hiram College in 1999. We spent 3 months touring the eastern half of the continent, traveling in a motorcoach complete with a modern day chuck wagon trailing behind. What a trip. I even created a website all about it, and it really hasn't been touched since 1999. Go there soon, because Yahoo! is eliminating their free Geocities hosting. Although it was ten years ago, whenever I visit the Australia area at the Columbus Zoo, I'm brought right back to the home of Kangaroos and Koalas.

The kangaroo pictured is one of the big reds, Macropus rufus, which live in the interior of the country. Reds are so common that many people in the outback place large metal bars across the fronts of their cars, almost like an old cow catcher, to protect their cars from collision. Our bus hit several on our trip, unfortunately.

A much more rare Aussie animal, and one that I never saw in the wild was the Koala, Phascolarctos cinereus. Koalas are from the forested regions of southeastern Australia. We did see them in sanctuaries, but we didn't spend enough time in the forested regions to see any wild populations. The history of Koala-human interactions is quite interesting- during the 19th and early 20th centuries, koalas were hunted for their fur, and eventually large culling programs were initiated. Hard to believe that such a cute and cuddly looking creature has had such a complex history with people.

Oh yeah, back to my title. The Aussies really do greet each other with "G'day". It's not just a joke or a stereotype. Here in America, guys like me talk about our friends or buddies, but if you're an Aussie and you're about to go have a VB (Victoria Bitter, great beer, extremely rare in the U.S.) with your buddies, you'd call them your "mates".

Tom

That concludes the images from the Columbus Zoo series. I needed some time away from blogging on Ohio nature for a little bit, but we've recently had plenty of interesting natural encounters, look for them this upcoming week.

Beco the Asian Elephant

Beco was born March 27th at the Columbus Zoo. We're especially fond of Beco, since he and Weston were born the exact same month. Weston was 8 pounds, 3 ounces at birth, while Beco was a whopping 303 pounds! On July 20th, the zoo posted that Beco was almost 600 pounds on their facebook page. He still isn't going into the outside pool at the zoo yet. His brother, Bohdi, was in the water almost immediately- Beco is a bit more timid.

Although Beco is 600 pounds, he's still tiny compared to his mother. If you have a chance, stop at the zoo to see this little elephant. You really have to see how small he is to appreciate him- he almost looks like a toy. Just like a big elephant, but much cuter. He's slightly uncoordinated, but his movements are so much fater than an adult elephant. He has grown quite a bit- here is a picture of him that I displayed on Tom Arbour Photography a few months ago.

We're not done yet with the zoo animal series- still up- creatures from Australia, one of my favorite places in the world.

This is my contribution to this week's Camera Critters meme.

Camera Critters

Tom

The Caribbean Flamingo

Welcome everyone that is stopping by from Abe Lincoln's Brookville Daily Photo. I haven't been able to ID his mystery plant yet, but I haven't given up.

Here I typically blog on natural areas in Ohio, but this week, I've been posting images that I took this weekend at the Columbus Zoo. This is a Caribbean Flamingo, Phoenicopterus ruber. The zoo has a nice colony of these interesting birds, and you can get quite close to them. In the wild, this bird lives in the Caribbean, along the Yucatan Peninsula, and the northernmost shores of South America.

Tom

Portrait of a Turkey Vulture

Columbus Zoo, August 2nd 2009

Tom

Columbus' Most Famous Baby

And I don't mean our son Weston. We finally got to see him, Columbus' most famous baby today, and it was worth the wait. To understand what I'm talking about, head over to TA Photography.

Map Turtles of Columbus

Zoo, that is. Some of you know that I'm taking a Photoshop for photographers class this quarter through Columbus State Community College. Here's one of the images that I put together for my final project. Megan looked at this, and said, "Those three turtles were not all in the same cage." Yep, she's right. My goal here wasn't to make it look like all three are resting on the same river bank, rather, I just wanted to have them blend in. The class has been pretty fun, and I've learned a ton. It got to be pretty tedious at times, but I really enjoyed the final project.

The Columbus zoo has a great collection of turtles in its reptile building, including several tanks of rare southern U.S. map turtles.

Tom

Taking the Plunge

I'm gearing up for the waterfowl season, and today, I got an early taste of the action at the Columbus Zoo. I am thinking that this is a female canvasback?

Tom

More Giant Furry Creatures

First up, I understand what Lana is saying (see comments for last post). I almost feel like I'm spying on the gorillas when we're at the zoo. What is interesting is just how humanlike gorillas are. They exhibit the same behaviors as we humans. In all seriousness, I don't feel much when I see carmine bee eater caged, but when taking these photos of this massive gorilla, I did feel like I was a peeping Tom- (no pun intended). I mean, can you imagine how you would feel if you had covertly taken a photo of a human that had picked their armpits and then tasted the results? Yeah, so I do feel something here. Fortunately, the zoo does close at 6:00, giving these creatures, at the very least, a little privacy for part of the day.

Tom

I'm off to Maine

Megan and I will be heading to visit her parents and brother tomorrow for Thanksgiving. They live in the Oxford Hills region of Maine, in a town called Otisfield. I'm looking forward to seeing the north woods again. Their property is covered with balsam fir, and although I don't think there will be any snow when we get there, I'm hoping the "odoriferousness" of the north woods gets me into the holiday spirit. Hopefully I can post a few short things while I'm there.

Back home in Columbus, I have started feeding birds. I put out a "No-No" black oil sunflower feeder (purchased at The Andersons), and the chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, downy woodpeckers and house sparrows needed only two days to find the bounty of black oiled sunflower seeds which it holds. So far, it is somewhat squirrel proof. I watched a gray squirrel easily remove one or two seeds at a time, and they've also learned to shake seeds out so they can eat them on the ground. Oh well. Nothing is perfect, but the feeder is about four feet outside of my window, giving me some nice photo opportunities.



Megan and I decided to beat the crowd last Friday night to the Columbus Zoo wildlights extravaganza. Especially cool was this pair of Indian star tortoises that were anything but bashful, the manatees, and the hammerhead sharks in the world of the seas building.

Aldabra Tortoise

It wasn't too cold for the Aldabra tortoises at the Columbus Zoo this past Sunday.

Although these huge turtles are fairly common at zoos and reptile parks, they are increasingly being bred for private ownership. Can you imagine having a 200 pound rock that is almost impossible to move and eats and you know whats like a small horse? I can't imagine owning one of these great beasts, but the going price for farmed specimens from the Seychelles is about $2500.

I'll stick to watching them at the zoo. They are extremely interesting creatures. I've never met anyone that didn't like turtles and tortoises.

 

Photographing Birds at the Columbus Zoo

The Columbus Zoo has an excellent North American bird aviary. It seems that some of these birds look great, and you can't exactly figure out how they made it from the wild into an aviary.

Take this Cedar Waxwing almost winking at the camera.

 

And this extremely tame bobwhite. You couldn't figure out what was wrong with these birds.

 

But others are clearly rescues. This male northern cardinal looked like it was missing an eye. On close inspection of the photo, he looks like he might have this eye, but something is surely wrong with it.

 

And here we have a mystery bird. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I was snapping away shots until I realized that something just did not look right. This bird was missing the top half of its bill!

 

I guess the point here is that I probably wouldn't have taken pictures of these birds had I noticed their deformities right away. Every once in a while you'll see birds like this in the wild. Bird watchers call them "marker" birds. They don't last long in the wild though, especially with deformities or injuries as significant as the birds above have. The aviary at the zoo is small and tucked away, but it shouldn't be missed if you enjoy watching Ohio's birds.

Tom

Fun with Film and Bohdi

Since I dropped my Canon digital camera into the Olentangy River a few weeks back, I have drug out the old Canon Elan IIe to reacquaint myself with film . I took some shots at the Columbus Zoo of Bodhi, the young Asian elephant. Here are some of my thoughts of my Bohdi shooting experience.

Overall, I was happy with the sharpness of this image. However, in all my pictures, there is a noticeable purple hue. I'm not sure if this is due to old film, or that the lens I use is an old cheapo Sigma that is known to produce color aberrations. Anyways, why I've been shooting film with my old lenses is to see if the old Sigma lens would get me by attached to a new Canon Eos Rebel XTI, or if I would need to shell out the cash for a new Canon lens.

Boy I'd love to have a new digital SLR (the aforementioned Canon) but it seems that I can capture most of the shots I typically take with Canon's point and shoot superzoom, the soon to be discontinued S3. Oh the dilemma!

Anyways, here is Bodhi. He looks fairly happy for a young elephant. He obviously has been building up some duff on his back. It looks itchy to me, but he must like it.

 

Tom

Bears and Elephants!

Hello Blog Readers!

On Sunday Tom and I took a lovely trip to the Columbus Zoo. We have a yearly zoo pass, which was very reasonably priced, and it makes it worth the while to go to the zoo for a short time when we do go. That way, we can really focus on what we are seeing rather than trying to see everything from North America to Asia to Australia! I got some great pics of some bears at the zoo. After our trip to "North America" we had to stop to see the elephants, my favorite zoo animal!

Enjoy!

Megan