Yesterday part 2

This will be the continuation of the photos made yesterday at the Wild Animal Park, as promised.

This Park, like the SD Zoo itself, is wonderfully landscaped.  Here's a short wall of bamboo to set the feeling...

This Park has a great display of Sumatran tigers, at least 6 of them.  We were lucky as many were quite active and it was a pleasure to see them in action.

This first one was practicing his winking...

A little closer next to this one, and you can see the intense look in his eyes.

Probably just wondering what the next meal might be?

Siblings tolerate each other much more than the adults: how about a claw in your face while you're trying to wash your feet?

Or maybe I'll just lie down and rest my paw on your head.   To protect you from sunburn of course...

In the distance was this dromedary sort of cresting a hill.

Near the top of this end of the Park is a good sized enclosure for the California Condors. It contains two retired female condors that have laid dozens of eggs successfully, and have helped rescue these gliders from extinction.  Unfortunately, no useful pictures since many photos were focused on the fence instead of the birds...  My bad.

This area has been populated with many native cactus, some of which now reach over 40 feet.

Looking out towards the Park, you can see the bamboos that I shot earlier; they're the light yellow/green diagonal slash in the middle of the photograph.

This next shot gives you a pretty good idea of just how big this animal park is.

A different view of the cactus.

There are quite of few of this type of tree in the area: quite tall, fairly spindly, and covered in thorns.

Back to our original wall of bamboo: it's the entrance to the condor area.

We were lucky to see these two two month old Cheetahs.  Unfortunately, they were behind glass and the reflections were pretty bad. Cute and gangly aren't they.

Nearby, a very slow moving turtle, about the size of a large soup plate.

Did you know that giraffes have a black tongue? It must be pretty tough too since this is licking fencing material...

Checking out what the tourists are eating...

Teasing the short ones with a tasty bit of bark.

The Park features a daily Cheetah run which is very well attended by patrons who stand two or three deep to look at a 5 second event.

I had the camera on motor drive, shooting about 5 frames per second. The previous frame shows nothing, the next frame showed a bit of tail.  That's it, that's all. They claim up to 70 mph. I have no doubt at all.

Maybe next time I'll shoot faster...

This is Peanut: a very small Armadillo from South America.  He's about mid size between the large and small bowling balls, and likely just as hard skinned.

He ran around quickly and had to be watched constantly by the attending trainer.

The trainer picked him up to show how well Peanut turns into a solid ball when threatened.
Peanut deserves his name and was very entertaining to watch.

Today, we went to the Science Museum where they had an excellent show of Lego Art. I hope to download and post later tonight.