Wild(ish) Wildlife: Compensation

This dragonfly was so sorry it didn’t have antennae of its own that it had to enjoy the proximity of other’s antennae.

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Wild Wildlife: High-Altitude Pollination

I was in Boulder, briefly, this past week, and I was not eaten by a mountain lion (something I was, I admit, a little afraid of). In fact, I saw no large mammals at all (apart from people), which was no hardship at all, really, when you consider that most of them could kill you. I was a little more frustrated by the cruel, taunting attitudes of the local birds, who either refused to stand conveniently next to measuring devices so that I could determine whether they were ravens or crows or else hid in trees, cheeping like finches or crossbills or who knows what and staying determinedly concealed by leaves.

Insects were my friends, though; they were so focused on nectar that they couldn’t have cared less if I took pictures of their pollinating activities. It made me wonder whether there’s anything different about pollination at high altitudes, the way there are different rules for baking; and then I wondered if all plants in the Denver/Boulder area consider themselves members of the Mile-High Club.

If so, they’re not telling…

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Flamingo Friday: Faces in the Crowd

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Looking Natural

I admit that, although the majority of the photos I post are from the zoo, I like to take pictures that minimize the visibility of the zoo itself, avoiding the curbs and concrete barriers, cages and glass and electric fencing. Part of that is an aesthetic concern (the non-botanical landscaping is not so attractive), part of it is an obsession with subjects (I want to focus completely on the specific animal[s] I’m interested in), and part of it is, of course, the almost subconscious desire to pretend that these animals are in the wild, in their natural environment—that, in fact, my lens has approached them so closely it’s almost as if we’re out there with them.

It’s not likely that I’ll change my style, but every now and then I get a niggling feeling of guilt, a desire to explicitly address the artificially natural habitat in which these creatures live.

I’m not saying they have terrible lives, and I certainly hope they have contented lives—but, regardless, they do have lives whose boundaries and behaviors are prescribed by humans rather more completely than even those of wild animals whose habitat we’re destroying.

I’ll leave it at that.

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One Good Shot: Batang Traverses the O-Line

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Flamingo Friday: The Gossip

“I heard from Evelyn that it’s not the shrimp diet making Marcos so pink…”

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Some Days Are Like That...

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Another Caption Challenge (#2)

[For further information, see this post]

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Flamingo Friday: Preening Positions

I love the curves and colors of preening flamingos, and the way that their gorgeous, multi-hued feathers ruffle up from their usually-sleek backs like the petals of apple blossoms swept up in the wind.

Okay, so I can’t describe it; let’s see you try.

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And That’s How We Beat The Heat, Short-Nose

It was hot in July. Really hot. So hot that my visiting friend, Adrian, and I couldn’t help but comment on the fact, repeatedly, as we walked through the zoo.

We weren’t the only ones holding this opinion of the weather, either; most of the animals, too, were considerably less than energetic.

["It's so hot."]

(Although the flamingos, cool in their pond, did find the energy to squabble and display, and the scarlet ibis had some kind of beak-clashing altercation with a roseate spoonbill, possibly over who was pinker).

Each of the two female elephants responded to the oppressive weather in her own way. One, after swinging her trunk forward and backward and through her legs in some sort of complicated, reminiscent-of-OCD pattern, splashed herself repeatedly with water,

and then crammed a trunk-full of water into her mouth.

The other elephant, who had been grazing for a while in a desultory manner, suddenly flung a clump of hay onto her head:

…And strolled on.

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“Not Such a Bad Life, Is It?”

…Said the man to his companion on Saturday morning as they watched the gorillas browsing for bamboo. He didn’t say this in a philosophical, questioning way (“It’s not such a bad life, is it?”) but in a confident, jolly tone (“Not such a bad life, is it?”), the same one that people who complain about welfare use when they talk about the grand ol’ time people are having surviving on food stamps.

Now, I am not trying to compare gorillas’ quality of living with that of people on welfare. But I do hate it when anyone who’s not part of a particular group makes vast generalizations and enormous assumptions about that group’s health and happiness.

I myself certainly hope the gorillas have decent lives, and I think the zoo does everything in its power to ensure that this is so. I also find the morning browsing rituals very peaceful to watch, and I believe this is because the gorillas themselves are peaceful in their activities—maybe not at peace, but at least tranquil. Nonetheless, I wish I had told the man: “The simple fact that a gorilla is leaning against the side of his enclosure and munching on leaves does not mean that he has a carefree or easy existence:

“For one thing, he has to deal with daily comments from schmucks like you.”

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Flamingo Friday: Infinity

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Profusion

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This Post Has No Redeeming Social or Intellectual Value

Look! Moon Jellyfish!

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"Aggressive" Cranes

Recently the zoo decided to post “Caution: Aggressive Cranes” signs on the fencing of the Stanley cranes’ exhibit. Now, I have no problem with this warning being posted on the wattled cranes’ exhibit, because the way those several-foot-high birds stab at insects in the soil with their long, knife-sharp beaks is quite intimidating. (Also, they have scary orange eyes.) –But the Stanley cranes have always seemed entirely mild-mannered to me, and the parent-child feeding interaction I witnessed this past weekend has not convinced me otherwise:

(Is that the face of an aggressive crane? No…!)

It’s true that a clever crane tactic would be to look mild-mannered right until the point you peck someone in the head, but that strategy seems unlikely to me. And in any case, the better warning for such a species would be “Caution: Devious Cranes.”

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