Toledo July 10, Part 2

For the hippo, dove, and kagu I've linked to the Toledo Zoo's animals page. I've not done this before because the website is not amenable to linking to a specific animal. If you end up there, expand the animal category and look for the animal.

I don't know if this is Herbie or Emma, but the hippo was caught in a blink.

A male many-colored fruit dove. Females are also colorful, but a little different from males.

A female violet-backed starling. Males have iridescent purple feathers.

African grey parrot

A kagu, one of my favorite birds. I find kagus mysterious, and they seem to be on a mission to guard, on foot, the perimeter of their enclosure.

golden-headed lion tamarin

 

Berloiz's silver pheasant

A feather from an emerald starling

Toledo July 10, Part 1

The missing gardener and I made our first trip together in 2021 to the Toledo Zoo July 10th. I've been feeling as though I haven't been getting great shots. I use Windows' built-in star system to rate my pictures and consider focus, composition, exposure, and what the animal is doing. A five-star photo is compelling in some way and makes me say, "Wow!" I gave all of these except the flower four stars.

This African elephant is Twiggy, I think. Some herbivores love their "browse" -- fresh leaves still on their twigs. Renee is the zoo's other elephant.

As far as I know, Twiggy's name has nothing to do with leaves and twigs. She arrived at the Toledo Zoo from some kind of private zoo where her care was insufficient and she was a few hundred pounds underweight. Pure speculation: She could have been named after the 1960's model Twiggy, who was famously thin, but she (the elephant) must've had a name already. She doesn't know how to be with others, and she and Renee don't hang out together.

A meerkat is on guard, of course.

 

red-billed blue magpie

A goat, breed unknown.

A chestnut-breasted malkoha. I had previously made an unintentional self-portrait as a reflection in this bird's (species, anyway, if not the same individual) eye. It happened again, although I had a certain amount of intention this time.

The malkoha displays a wing.

As with our trip to Akron in 2020, my best shot of the day was of a flower, in this case a day lily.

The birds in this post live in the zoo's pheasantry, and many of them are colorful, some spectacularly so. The Himalayan monal is one of the spectacular ones. The brown female was out in the open, but the male was barely visible under a bush. Looks like I have a quest.

A few cats

These are "small cats" except for the leopard. All pictures are from the Columbus Zoo.

Geoffroy's cat

 

I often find these sand cats sleeping.

There was a fly in their room, and one of the trio got it (out of the air, if I remember correctly). At least, they and I thought so, but we didn't see the fly again.

serval

African leopard

African leopard

A couple of flyers

This 17-year cicada was on the wall of a ticket building at the Columbus Zoo, and a damselfly was in my back yard on a forsythia bush. There were no cicadas at my house. Which is fine.

I wonder if this member of cicada Brood X spent some time in a spiderweb. Notice the light-colored diagonal line about as far behind the eyes as where the wings are attached.

There's schmutz on the outstretched wingtip.

 

There's what might be a web strand attached to the tip of the wing.

I shot the cicada with my macro lens and was maybe six inches from the bug. The lens is my hammer, and I am looking for nails. One nail is a certain gecko which is at the center of a project that so far is not going well.

But who needs a macro lens when there's a zoom lens extended to 300mm and a photographer standing three feet away from the subject?

ebony jewelwing, male

Look at this picture and the next one on a big screen or zoom in to see what look like long hairs on the legs.