At the end of January, GWAPA members were treated with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Amazonia Exhibit at the National Zoo. Below are pictures from that tour:

Last weekend I had the pleasure to spend the day at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Following Hurricane Irene, there were relatively few folks there, but the weather was fantastic. I wanted to share some of my pictures from the day’s excursion. One of my favorite exhibits at the zoo is the Amazonia exhibit. This exhibit features a huge aquarium with large Pacu, catfish, and my favorite, an Arapaima.

The exhibit also has a large rainforest area above the aquarium that has monkeys roaming, birds flying, and lots of plants from the Amazon region.

Outside, a young female orangutan was climbing around on the lines they have that allows them to get their exercise in full view of the visitors.

In a pool nearby, the american alligator floats still while enjoying the sun on a clear day in the park.

All the while, several lion cubs are chasing each other, wrestling around in the lion pit. At one point, these two cubs get a little too rowdy for papa, who was people watching up until that point.

The park itself is landscaped wonderfully, and for us aquatic plant enthusiasts, there are several wet areas to check out. The Nymphoides above were flowering while we were there.

Inside the small mammal house, an incredibly cute and popular meerkat stoically stood and peered at the crowd checking him out.

Likewise, in the ape house, this female ape was seated on a branch about 20 feet off of the ground, relaxing.

The lemur was bright eyed as always! And of course, the elephants were roaming around outside smile as the pleasant weather.

I was happy to see that the animals were all behaving normally after an earthquake and hurricane swept through the area in the same week. If you missed this story, many of the animals reacted to the impending earthquake prior any shaking. All in all, we had a wonderful time at the National Zoo, and recommend it to visitors to the area.

Several more pictures are available on my Flickr stream.

I was fortunate to be able to spend the past couple weeks in California, and while I was there my wife and I visited the San Diego Zoo. I’ve always heard wonderful things about the zoo in San Diego, and after visiting, I have to say that it is a top-notch zoo and deserves every accolade that it receives. The variety is incredible, with lots of pathways with more creatures than you could possibly visit in a single day. Unfortunately, that’s all the time we had to spend there, but nevertheless I took hundreds of pictures. I wanted to share a few of them with you below:

Gorilla

Turtle

Giraffe

Ant Eater

Camel

Meerkat

Elephant

Polar Bear

Zebra

Flamingo

Panda Bear

Snow Leopard

Boar

Koala Bear

Koala Bear

Flamingo