Wednesday, December 3, 2014

A Day at The Zoo

I had all these things planned for the weekend and what did we do none of them we had friends call in Saturday, then Sunday hubby wanted to go up bush with the metal detector to see what he could find, got up Sunday morning and the temp was only 20 but they said it would be about 25 degrees and up bush it is usually 5 -10 degrees hotter. So on the spur of the moment we decided to go to the zoo thinking 25 degrees wouldn't be too hot for us so we gathered our cameras daughter and her friend and off we went.

We arrived at the Melbourne Zoo about 1.30pm, to be greeted by the hot sun streaming down on us as I whipped the sweat from my brow as I handed the money over for admonition.

I wasn't sure which direction to walk first, there were a few paths we could take I was beginning to feel quite hot but was very thankful I had brought a drink with me. My backpack which housed all my camera gear was feeling quite heavy on my back, but no I wasn't going to let that stop me.  I was a little bit lazy and had decided cos it was so hot not to change my lens and make do with the 50-200mm one, although a couple of times I wished I'd changed it, but the majority of photos turned out to be quite good.

For the first time I managed to get the courage up and enter the Butterfly enclosure, I am usually scared of anything which crawls and butterflies were the same, but I had to over come my fear because i was so keen to get some great shots which I did. The enclosure was like I'd stepped into a sauna it was so hot, the butterflies flew above my head and i even had one land on me. Wow I didn't even jump. You have to be so proud of me...




Many of the animals were very hard to see, as I watch children calling out to them and running in excitement to see if they cold see anything behind the glass window, the looks on their faces as they jumped up and down in anticipation.  many of the animal's were hidden, trying to stay cool from the sun. The elephants played playfully in the water whist the giraffes near by stood and watched as they stretched their necks over the door.

  
I longed for for the shade of a nice cool tree as it felt like it was about 35 degrees, all the animals we safely hiding in the shade or asleep somewhere. Children everywhere wanted to see them, people on holidays from over seas spoke in broken English trying to say each animals name and not always getting the pronunciation quite correct, which made me giggle.
Meerkat
 

These little Meerkats are the cutest things, all they do is sit there looking around at every body.
Not sure what type of monkey this is, but it sure did have a strange face.
 
 I'd never seen a bird like this before. Quite unusual
 Australian Budgerigars
Australian Kookaburra


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