It's a TV Zoo out there!

Yesterday we started off to Kensington to spend more personal time with "Judy's Birds" and the radio told of the traffic in the area, so we detoured down Woodward to the Detroit Zoo. Judy has been pestering me to go there as well. It has been several years. We were happy to see most animals "out and about" and took quite a few pics of mammals and so on. Yet, it was also very interesting to see the "zoo birds" through our new "birding eyes". What fascinating creatures!

I think the most fascinating for birding was to see many local Turkey Vultures (TV) flying into and around the enclosures - especially the enclosure with the exotic vultures. I suspect they might have been migrants (reference the huge migrating TV day at LEMP on that day!) and the migrants probably were as fascinated as we were by the weird relatives they saw below. At least two dozen local TVs were seen! I caught some great pics of them flying in - the only problem was that with my tele, I rarely seemed to get a full shot - they were that close! (Ah, yes, I remember the time I went whale watching in southern California and had a telephoto lens that proved quite useless when the whales surfaced almost under the boat, ... but that is another story!).

Anyway, after seeing and photographing the exotic vultures, I had to go learn more about these creatures!

I will post pics to my PBase site and share the link here when done. As always, learning is about asking questions! I shot the placards at the zoo to try to get their names right, but had to go Wiki to see if I could verify and find more info.

Anyway, it was really amazing to have my first "up close and personal" encounter with the local Turkey Vultures I had mostly only seen/shot previously as "contrasts in the sky"! They seemed to come right at me!

For now I am posting a few pics of the "locals". These pics alone were enough reason to go to the Detroit Zoo yesterday!

"It's All Happening at the Zoo"! (S and G) [Oh, for my seaweed friends I am not talking Setchell and Gardner here - rather Simon and Garfunkle].

Enjoy!

More rambles and pics later - just starting this...