Monday, October 15, 2007

Photographing Birds at the Columbus Zoo

The Columbus Zoo has an excellent North American bird aviary. It seems that some of these birds look great, and you can't exactly figure out how they made it from the wild into an aviary.

Take this Cedar Waxwing almost winking at the camera.

 


And this extremely tame bobwhite. You couldn't figure out what was wrong with these birds.

 


But others are clearly rescues. This male northern cardinal looked like it was missing an eye. On close inspection of the photo, he looks like he might have this eye, but something is surely wrong with it.

 


And here we have a mystery bird. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I was snapping away shots until I realized that something just did not look right. This bird was missing the top half of its bill!

 


I guess the point here is that I probably wouldn't have taken pictures of these birds had I noticed their deformities right away. Every once in a while you'll see birds like this in the wild. Bird watchers call them "marker" birds. They don't last long in the wild though, especially with deformities or injuries as significant as the birds above have. The aviary at the zoo is small and tucked away, but it shouldn't be missed if you enjoy watching Ohio's birds.

Tom
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1 comment:

  1. That first photo is a classic! I love the aviaries in the zoo - they're such a great place to get bird photos, not like around the yard, where they are always moving around.

    Cheers,

    David Webb

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