Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Zoo Visit - July 11

Two Sunday's ago Kyle and made it over to the Como Zoo after a few family photo shoots I had. Luckily the rain stayed away for both shoots and the zoo visit!
mpls skyline storm clouds

I had rented a super kick a$s lens for one of my shoots and wanted to take complete advantage of it before I had to return it the next day and thought... what would be good to shoot with it? Well the animals at the zoo! I mentioned a while ago we went to the Minnesota Zoo, the Como zoo is different (and better) in that is is FREE! and has penguins, polar bears, and puffins!!! Some of my favorites :-)

Before we even made it to the zoo (and after our numerous detours due to road construction and well the second 2 detours were just getting lost) We finally made our way closer to Como Park... we saw this:
groundhog1

Thinking it was a gopher and so excited to see a Minnesota Gopher (lol)... but then this morning when Kyle and I were looking online we realized it wasn't a gopher... it's a ground hog. But still fun to see out in the wild as we were driving by.
groundhog2

We made it to the zoo and were excited to see the bonsai tree exhibit was finally open! We had been to this zoo & conservatory many times before, with friends and family... and this exhibit was always closed. Some of the trees were over 100 years old! It was crazy how small they are but that they look like 'big' miniature trees. Pretty cool. This one was 55 years old.
bonsai tree

I was able to get some better pictures with this rental lens because it had a max aperture of 2.8... which makes it great for getting pictures indoors!! I just wish the glass cages were a little cleaner. Here's a penguin:
penguin

We couldn't find the Lion, but we did get to see the Tiger laying out. It was pretty humid. As you could see in the first city picture, it looked like it was about to storm any minute. By the time we made it to the cat cages they were announcing that the zoo was closing in 30 minutes, so of course the rest of kind of a shuffle toward the exit... but still enjoying the animals.
tiger

The giraffes were already put away for the night, but the ostriches were still hanging out... and sitting really funny. Crazy how their legs work. You can see the other ostrich in the background frolicking away from the zebra and putting on a show for the viewers, heehee.
sitting ostrich

I remember seeing this bird last time too, not sure what his name is, but he's a pretty thing.
bird

It was slowly sprinkling as we made our way into the primate building. I call this one "The Thinker".
thinking monkey

This guy was funny with just how many legs he could get on the branch at one time, lol.
monkey

These guys were so cute!!!
funny monkeys

We made it to the exit with a few minutes to spare so we wondered into the butterfly house. In all the times we had been to Como Zoo we never went to the butterfly house, it was actually really fun!! I have the name of this one on a brochure at home... I'll have to add it later.
butterfly

Happy Summer!

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