Even though I live about an hour away from The San Francisco Zoo, and my friend Colleen lives about half an hour away, it isn’t somewhere either of us have visited often, so on our recent trip when we went to visit the animals and take photos, we took a long time walking around and stopping at all the exhibits.
As we parked across the street at Ocean Beach, we first observed some surfers. It was a very cold day, and rumored to be quite rainy so there were not many out. This surfer in the above photo appears to be all alone out on ocean in this photo, and was pretty much the only person standing on a board at that time. Then we made the harrowing trek to the zoo (across two lanes of traffic) to visit the animals.
The lucky giraffes don’t have to look hard for their food – branches are brought in and placed around where they roam so they have easy access to it. This one looked especially hungry.
Hasani, the young gorilla below, has an extended family in the zoo. His mother, Monifa, doesn’t display maternal instincts, most likely as she’s never seen another gorilla mother and child (as she would have in the wild). So first the zookeepers, then an experienced gorrilla mother, Bawang were brought in to mother the little tyke. He seems to be doing quite well, and even has the attentions of many other gorillas to watch him.
These animals were content to ignore all the people looking at them and taking their photos as they groomed one another. At first I was shooting this at their level, then I notice a huge flight of stairs that allowed people a much better view.
This zookeeper gave a great talk on the American Bald Eagle. The bird seemed to be trying to listen to the story, and even looked directly in the eyes of his handler.
One of the best parts of the zoo is seeing animals relatively up close that you would run from in the wild. This rhino, whose skin texture is complimentary to the rock background, instead of charging at an enemy, spent time pushing a ball around the enclosure.
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