A Day at the Bronx Zoo!

Aw heck, I wanna blog about something fun for a change.

As you can see, Jamie's new camera is really spectacular.  Most of these were taken through glass and from some distance away.  I take absolutely no credit for these fantastic shots.  

Apparently the Bronx Zoo has some kind of speaker system set up in the tigers' den.  We kept hearing these ominous growling sounds and finally realized they were coming from this guy yawning up a storm.  

Terrifying and so cute at the same time.  He got all clean and cozy before finally settling down for a nap.  Awwwww, kitty!

These are some kind of sparrow I think.  They were almost impossible to see within the branches as they're even smaller than your standard sparrow you'd find in the suburbs.  Jamie's camera, however, has visual powers that we mere humans know not.

After almost three years in New York City, I thought pigeons could get no fatter.  At least this one had some shiny blue feathers to his credit.

This giant toucan was huge.  HUGE.  I should have put my hand in the picture to give it some scale.  The shape of that sort of beak-hat and the white iris of his eyes distinguish him as a male.  There was a female in there, too; she had a more curvy shaped beak-hat thing (that's a technical term) and a red iris.  Pretty flippin' sweet.

I have to say, this photo is just stunning.  Toucan Sam, as we named him, was sitting in a thicket of branches at a very weird angle in relation to where we were standing and somehow Jamie managed to turn him into the prize photo of the day.  Well done, sir!

We were looking for a place to sit and have our packed lunch of prosciutto and mozzarella sandwiches with sea salt and vinegar chips, (oh the joys of dating a recreational chef!), when we realized the pond/river next to us was full of swans and mallards!  What a cool zoo.

Believe it or not, this awesome dude was easily 40 feet away from us.  No feces were harmed/thrown in the taking of this photograph.

Having been addicted to "Lost" for the last five years, I have not looked at polar bears in the same way.  This guy, however, was pretty entertaining.  He started out on a little island of snow in the middle of his pool, jumped over to this narrow edge, walked all the way from one side to the other with very nimble paws, stopped, posed, then turned and trotted back to the starting point.