Another Lens … Another Zoo

Saturday, 2 June

I tried.  I really tried to get some ‘wildlife in the wild’ photos with my new Canon 70-200 f2.8 lens, but our recent trip to the Mason Neck NWR was a bust.  There were no birds, and the few deer we saw were hidden in the thickets.  So, I had to resort to another zoo trip to test my lens.

Instead of revisiting the Smithsonian Zoo in DC, we took advantage of a beautiful early summer day to drive the 55 miles (88 km) to The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore — aka, the Baltimore Zoo.  Getting there was a piece of cake; the return trip not so much.  The seemingly endless road construction projects around the area backed traffic up for miles.  With even alternate routes not providing any relief, that part of the day goes into the books as “best forgotten.”

1 hour and 15 minutes to get there; 3 hours and 30 minutes to get back.

We arrived at the zoo just minutes before they opened the doors to the public at 10:00a.  That’s a little late, IMHO; but I guess it works for the general populace.  Luckily, we’d purchased our tickets online ($16.50/person) so we didn’t have to stand in the long line to gain admittance.

Zoo layout; map scanned from brochure.

Once inside, we made a quick stop at Prairie Dog Town to see the young pups before heading over to the main area of the zoo to check out the other animals.

Black-Tailed Prairie Dog pup and sow.
The pups open their eyes around 5 weeks and leave the burrow a week later.
by my calculations, this pup is 6+ weeks old.

Before I get to the rest of the pictures, let me just say that the lens performed beautifully despite operator error.  Lest you’re under the misguided impression that I never make a misstep, the blunder I made today was a doozy — I neglected to check and correct the ISO setting on the camera.  I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  Maybe I need better glasses to differentiate between ISO 100 and 1000!!!!  Duh, Erin — you know better … grrrr!

I saved the best of the photos from the shoot, as well as a few of the not-so-technically-good ones that captured ‘behavior’ and deleted over 500 of the photos I took.  Here are a couple of the keepers for your viewing pleasure.

Arctic Fox
Probably my favorite photo from this shoot.  You can see it in B&W here.

Arctic Fox
This young fox is just starting to change from its winter coat into its summer coat.

scarlet Macaw
Because she’s a ‘quacker’, the keepers have named her Ritz.

Demoiselle Crane

Addra Gazelle & Lesser Kudu
This young Gazelle apparently didn’t get the memo that he’s supposed to mate
with his own kind.  The kudu was remarkably patient with him; but just after I took this
photo, she turned around to nip at him, thus ending his amorous attempts to mount her. 
[one of those technically not good photos I kept because of the ‘unexpected’ behavior.]

Plains Zebra
This zebra wasn’t braying, so I can only assume that it was scenting the air.

Cattle Egret (left) showing breeding plumage & Little Blue Heron in the free-flight aviary.

One of my favorite areas turned out to be the Warthog pen.  Kumari was out with the four piglets she gave birth to in April — three females and one male.  The dappled light in this area made for difficult light conditions, so I decided to try the 7Ds monochrome setting.  I like how these pictures turned out.

Warthog
Kumari — a face that only a mother could love!

Kumari Suckling her Piglets.
warthog Sows have four teats, which limits a litter to at most that number of piglets.
Each piglet has its 'own' teat and nurses exclusively from it.  Even if one piglet dies,
the others do not suckle from the available teat.

I can’t visit a place that has a mural and not take pictures of it.  So here are segments from the Wall of the Wild, a 150-foot (46 m) mural I came across at the zoo today. (You can read more about the mural, and the artist who painted it, in this article.)

Wall of the Wild

After handling the 70-200 all day, my main problem with the 300 mm lens I returned became quite apparent.  It wasn’t the weight (5.17 pounds [2.3 kg] vs 3.28 pounds [1.49 kg]), but rather the diameter of the prime lens that made handholding it difficult for me.  At 3.5 inches (9 cm), the 70-200 fits my hands much better than the 5-inch (13 cm) round 300 mm lens.

There’s no question that a prime lens is superior too a zoom, but I am very happy with this next best option, which is going to go a long ways towards simplifying my camera bag.  The 70-200 lens is a keeper :-)

And now for my pièce de résistance …

The End!