22 February 2014:
Our adventure to San Diego Zoo's Safari Park in North San Diego County.
A few photos (Canon 5D Mark II)
I did not drive. John did. He brought down some 30 people from the Hermosa Five-O group.
Lily, on our lovely walk out to the California Condor exhibit. The weather was perfect.
The San Diego Zoo has a number of California Condors in its care. There are just over 400 birds known in existence, about half in captivity and half in the wild. Naturalists have been working hard to get the population numbers up. The red markers are used to easily identify each individual bird.
We took a tram ride around the main open area, meant to resemble an African plain. Here is a rhino grazing away, with a number of visitors looking on. You could pay more for a back-of-the-truck ride for a more up close and personal encounter. We stuck to the tram for today.
I rented a telephoto zoom lens for the day. These last three pictures all used that lens, but I think this last image showed the quality of the optics. It was a hand-held shot from the tram, and the tram was stopped at this point because the driver was pointing out this isolated animal. I just love the sharpness of the image. I think the fuzziness around the trees is not the fault of the lens, but rather a netting that they put around the trunks to keep the animals from nibbling away at the bark. (1/500 sec at f/8, ISO 200, Canon EF 70 - 200mm lens at 160mm, for those of you who care about such things).
