Nocturnal

The Australia and the Islands area at the Columbus Zoo includes a building for nocturnal animals. It's usually so dark that I have a hard time seeing the animals, let alone take a picture, so I usually move right through to the aviary. The other day, though, more lights were on, and I got a few shots. They're lousy, but thought I'd never get any of these animals. All but the wombat photo have been enhanced with software.

binturong

The brush-tailed bettong is about the size of a large rat and moves like a kangaroo.

This is Glen, a southern hairy-nosed wombat. He can be a busy guy.

Halmahera gecko. It was bathed in pretty intense red light, but darkening the photo brought out details. The original photo is below.

I wasn't able to find a reliable web page for this lizard. I have a picture of the zoo's sign with the common and scientific names, but they appear not to match, and I don't know which is correct. I run into this problem more often than I expected.

The tawny frogmouth's feathers look like tree bark. The Toledo Zoo had one, and its tree matched its feathers to the point that it was hard to see even though the room was full of diffuse daylight. Click the link to see examples of this.

The photos are crummy for a couple of reasons. The low light means using a high ISO (light sensitivity), and that leads to graininess in the images. Also, autofocus didn't always work. I have a hard time in general with manual focus because a tiny move of the focus ring makes a big difference. In the low light I sort of guessed when the animal was in focus.