Shirtsleeves, Unmolested

I had the day off yesterday and decided to go to the Zoo for a little relaxed photography. It was pretty cold but the Detroit Zoo has all manner of cool indoor exhibits so I headed for my favorites: the butterfly house, the river otters, the reptile house, and of course the polar bear tunnel.

The butterfly house is a great place to go on a cold day because it's like a big greenhouse. I got some pictures of the usual suspects:



but one cool surprise was a hummingbird, something I rarely see in there. I did get some pretty clear pic of the little guy, but the blurry one from yesterday is my fave.

On to the land of otters, and if you think photographing hummingbirds and children is hard, you need to try to capture these greasy little writhing tubes of energy as they play in the water. It's darned near impossible to get a good shot, and my keeper/throwaway ratio is like 2% in this place. Here's my favorite:

Next up was the reptile house. Now THESE things are easy to photograph! The hardest part is finding them in their enclosures. This guy seemed especially suspicious of me:

Lastly, I can't go to the zoo without seeing how the polar bears are getting on. I was lucky that two of the bears were playing in the water this time, but the number of people crowding the tunnel made for some difficult shooting. I love this picture of one of the large male bears sitting up on top of the tunnel, half out of the water:

While I did really miss the kids, it is nice to go to the zoo alone every now and then, just to be able to stop and take pictures without the constant tugging on the shirtsleeves to keep moving.