Zoo Workshop::The Birds::May 12

On Saturday, the photography club that I'm a part of had a special workshop shoot at the zoo. A few zookeepers brought out a few different animals for us to take pictures of. There were birds, reptiles, mammals, and a millipede.

After taking pics of all of the animals from the workshop, Steve & I wandered through the rest of the zoo and took more pictures, including some taken at the bird show.

I've got a bunch of pictures, so I've sorted the by type. This post will be about the birds.

Here are the birds from the workshop:

Okay, so this one wasn't one that the zookeeper brought out, but it was flying around an landed on a post. I thought it was pretty :)


I don't remember which specie of owl this was, but it is really a pretty bird.



I found out that these animals that the zookeepers brought out during the workshop are used for educational purposes. Each of these animals have something wrong that would prevent them from living in the wild. The owl is actually blind in one eye.

This is a peregrine falcon. It is a beautiful bird! I learned from the keeper that the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth. This one suffered a brain injury when it flew into something.



This is a Kookaburra. I don't know its backstory though.



The rest of the pics are of birds located throughout the zoo.

This owl was part of the bird show. I love how this first picture looks like he's bowing :)



And he got a treat:



These two were in the aviary part of the zoo:





This cute little guy was sitting on the fence next to the tiger cage:



A turkey vulture:



And the next one has an interesting story.

As I was adjusting the settings to take this peafowl's picture, a zoo worker came up and asked, "Do you notice anything about this bird?"

I had already been looking at it a little bit, and what I'd noticed is that it had duller colored tail feathers like a peahen, but it had the markings (I think they look like eyes) on the feathers that the peacocks have. He said that up until last year, this bird had been a peahen. Within the past year, it has gotten the markings on its tail and is becoming a peacock. It is a hermaphrodite, and it is not common for peafowl to change sexes like that, so this is a rare bird. Very cool!



That's it for the birds, but there are more pictures that I will post soon.

♥