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Okay, okay, I'm late, but here they are!

The bug house has a new exhibit; Bees! Sort of a T-shaped structure with tall windows so you can see straight through to the comb on both sides. There's a tube that leads outside so the bees can go do their thing. Hard to take pics of though because of the lighting; the side with the best lighting is the side you can't stand in front of because, well, then you block the light. Anyway. Here's the best shots.





I thought it was weird how these red-eared turtles were all at the same angle. These guys are hard to get pics of too, and I was ecstatic that they held still for a few good pics.



And this dude is a Manchurian brown bear. He's 24 years old, and his story is somewhere in the zoo blog, but if I remember right, he was at the zoo, went somewhere else (maybe Germany?) and now he's back. This is the first time I've seen him, and he had a yummy bone to chew on.



And here's a spectacled bear taking a nap.

Since I'm sure you're all going through withdrawal because of the lack of zoo pics (blame my new work schedule. Boo.) here's some!

So, I made it to the National Zoo right about 10am this morning, 'cause, ya know, I had my heart set on seeing one of these, my favoritest animal in the whole wide world:



These are Przewalski's horses. The Wild Animal Park has some, but they're not on the tour bus route anymore so they're very hard to see. The NZ ones obviously aren't. The WAP people said these are particularly nasty critters. Mean. They bite.



Everybody go "Awwww!" Here's a little rock cavy hanging out in the Small Mammal house.



And what could be better than a giant beetle? A giant beetle made of lots of little beetles! There was a big beetle on the wall, but this is a close-up. Nifty, huh?



In the Amazonia building, they had aquariums, which included this ginormous fish.



But, I'd have to say this nifty iguana is my pic o' the day.

Went to the zoo with D today. I was shocked and amazed to see this guy actually right up next to the glass; I've only ever seen him up on top of the hill and pacing. I suppose I always go too close to lunchtime.



More dead leaf mantis. Much better now that can use my camera to manually focus things.



A stick insect with a nifty head.



And Clyde doing an impression of a mop. This is just a cool pic.

Didn't go to the zoo, but I did stop by the rose garden because I had to get outside for a while. It's hard to take a bad picture there so I uploaded a bunch.









The fountain was off for some reason, and I found these floating in there and thought it was nifty.





And now I'm off to see James Patrick Kelly read at Mysterious Galaxy for the Clarion class.

Went to the cactus garden, and look what I found! A cicada! I figured it's a sign. Would've missed him except he kept making noise and it led me right to him.



Lots of bees and flowers, too.



And this dove found a prickly place to have a nest.



And then I went to the zoo, and saw them feed the anteaters. This is Lucy. Check out her tongue; you can see it curving all the way around the tray.



And I have a new favorite critter, this little white-faced capuchin monkey. Awwwww. He came up to the glass and said hi to me.

Alas, I was remiss in posting yesterday.

Here's Kenai the Arctic wolf. They're readying the ampitheater for the summer show, so they were doing a show and tell just outside of it, so we all got to get up close to the critters. Kenai has a dog buddy to keep him calm and to keep him company. His brother is over at the other theater. And the trainers get the crowd to start howling and then the wolf howls. I just learned that wolves howl in discord, so he waits for the crowd to go and then howls a pitch they aren't.



This pic isn't the best, but it's the first time I've actually seen this little Kazhakstan fox.



And here's a New Guinea singing dog, one of two the zoo has, and becoming endangered because of habitat loss and breeding with regular dogs.



The zoo has two other canine species; African wild dogs (my favorites!), Michael J., the little fennec fox in the children's zoo. The four hyenas, which are always sleeping when I walk by, aren't dogs, even though they look like it; they're closer to mongoose and meerkats.

( And there are more pics here. )

Overall, it turned out to be a great day for pics, even though it was cloudy and windy and not your stereotypical San Diego weather.

It was ape and monkey day. This one, I think, is one of my favorites of all time now. It's damn near perfect, I think, and I didn't crop or alter it at all. This is Clyde, the big male orangutan.



Here's a bonobo. Watching these critters was somewhat creepy, because to me they look far more human than any of the other apes. I really like this pic too.



( more pics )

Went to the beach. Low tide, which means I got to see lots of nifty little critters in the rocks. I waited about a half hour for this guy to come out from under a rock to get a pic--worth the wait, don't you think?





And an anemone (lots of anemones around)



And a fishy



And a bee.



Went to the zoo, but only long enough to take a few pics of reptiles like this iguana.

Zoo pics!

This is a golden mantella, I think. Frogs are hard to get, both because of the lighting and the water spot-covered exhibits.



I forget what this guy is called, but it's some sort of turtle, and I finally got a good pic of him.



Aaaand, just because peacocks are pretty.



This is the first time I've ever seen the echidna awake and moving. He shuffles. It's kind of cute.



The green guy is an ocellated lizard, and the guy on the right is NOT a snake. It's a legless lizard called a glass lizard.



And, speaking of snakes, you can tell spring is coming because all the snakes were much more lively today, including this king cobra.



( And my favorite pic of the day, cut for arachnophobes. )

Look, I made a new icon with my kitty, Mina.

Wanted to go to Disneyland today, but with the threat of rain, I decided to stay in town. Been hankering to go visit the Birch Aquarium anyhow, so I did that instead.

And, for kelly_yoyo I found this guy, who was darn hard to get a pic of. Actually, all the fishies were hard to get pics of because of trying to use the flash and the flash showing up on the glass. The color is better without the flash, but the critters move, so they turn out blurry. -sigh- With the flash, it's actually a bit dark. The picture program I use has an "auto adjust" option, so I hit that, and they turn out all right.



This is a bell jellyfish. They were nifty.



This was my favorite critter--a sea dragon, a rather leafy-looking sea horse.



Check out the camouflage on this stonefish.



This is the biggest exhibit, properly called the Kelp Tank.



And a lionfish. Bonus points for those who know a certain SF TV show with a pet lionfish. Extra bonus points if you know what said fishy's name is/was.



And this statue outside kept reminding me of Star Trek IV. Likely also because I got a bunch of original Star Trek DVD's from the library and had a mini Trek-a-thon.