Samantha Ling

I hadn’t expected to see the butterfly jungle while we were at the Wild Animal Park. The website said that it would only be there until April 18th, and we had gone on April 22. It would probably explain why I didn’t see nearly as many butterflies as the plaques said there were. I wanted to see the blue one, but there was no blue one’s in site. There were still plenty of butterflies left though, along with several birds.

Unfortunately, some of my photos were rather blurry. The butterflies didn’t stay long and I used the long lens which doesn’t have a wide aperture (meaning the iris doesn’t open big enough to allow enough light in. Narrow aperture + long lens + low light = blurry pictures. To combat this, you’re supposed to use a longer exposure, meaning that you imprint the image onto the disk longer. But again, long lens+low light+long exposure = blurry photo because I can’t keep the camera stable enough and I don’t carry a tripod. It’s hella heavy.).

But you can see that some of the butterflies were on their way out. The edges of the butterfly wings are all raggedy. The reason why this butterfly has that big old eye on its wing is that it looks like an owl’s eye. when predators are around, they flutter their wings so it looks like owl’s eyes blinking and the predators think better than to try and eat it.

And here is a photo of one of the birds that were in the same enclosure. I don’t know what it’s called or why it’s so colorful, but I really like mohawk.

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

As Jenn has already mentioned, we went to the Wild Animal Park some days back. Jenn had mentioned that she took 200 photos, but she was only subjecting you to five or so. Well, I took 700 and you guys aren’t as lucky. But don’t worry, it won’t be all 700, I promise.

Since the wild animal park was originally created as a breeding facility, I figured I’ll start by posting pictures of the babies. This animal we saw while on the one free safari ride. It’s at the back of the park, so hoof it down there the first thing you do, assuming you get there early enough. We got there, I believe, about 10 a.m., and it wasn’t that crowded. This was the first baby we saw.

This particular baby had just been born that morning. He was so new that you could see his umbilical cord. He was standing, but wasn’t walking so well. His legs were still really rickety.

Here is the mother and her baby. There is a second baby that may or may not be her baby. I’m not sure how often they can have babies, but right after the other like that seems to be really fast. I wouldn’t want to have so many babies so close together. It would be too much work!

Towards the end of the day, we went back to the safari ride again. It ended at 4:30 and we managed to get the last ride. We were lucky too, because we saw the baby again, but this time by itself. During the first few days of its life, it doesn’t have a smell. They didn’t explain why that was, but the mother kept the baby away from the herd and stood guard. I couldn’t find anything on the internet either. But here’s a photo of the baby.

The only thing I can think of is that should the herd be hunted by something, the baby, who doesn’t smell and has rickety legs and is away from the herd, wouldn’t be found by the hunter.

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal