National-Zoo on It's a Binary World 2.0

First Trip to the Zoo

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 20:05:21 +0000

The weather was finally improving and so we figured it was a good time to take the twins to the zoo for the first time. When Scarlett was around the same age she didn’t care for the animals as much. She was much more interested in the kids around her. So we weren’t sure if the kids would enjoy it. The National Zoo seemed like a wise choice since it was free to enter.

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Mid-October 2015 Zoo Visit

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 04:01:46 +0000

For the first time in something like 3 years I took my Sigma 120-400mm lens to the zoo. I had intended to get some Firefox (Red Panda) photos and videos, but they weren’t there. That was also a bummer for Scarlett as seeing the Red Pandas was the reason she’d asked us to take her to the zoo.

First off we saw one of the pandas:

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But what was a lot of fun was taking photos of the birds; birds that would have been quite hard for me to see in the wild. I think they came out pretty nicely considering the darkness in the bird house and the fact that I was hand-holding the lens. It seems like some of the higher ISO photos didn’t even have too much noise, so I’ll explore using it in the future to get the exposure a little more correct in camera. (if the photos look blurry when you click on them, give it a little time to load)

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Top 200 Photos: #130

Sun, 08 May 2011 04:01:51 +0000

Tai Shan is back for this Top 200 Photo

photo #130 is:

Another photo of Tai Shan. This time he’s small enough to get on these flimsy branches without falling immediately. It was fun to watch him test the branches to see if they would hold his weight.

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Top 200 Photos: #138

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:01:18 +0000

Back to DC for today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #138 is:

I mentioned Tai Shan before. This is his father, Tian Tian. My wife is always expressing how pandas should be extinct already from having such a dumb diet. They eat bamboo, but it is so nutrient deficient that they essentially have to eat non-stop or they will end up actually losing weight by just laying around and being alive.

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Top 200 Photos: #166

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 04:01:39 +0000

From NYC to our nation’s Capital for today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #166 is:

As I mentioned before, we loved to go to the National Zoo to go see the Pandas. Well, thanks to Tai Shan, the zoo got a huge injection of donations which it used to revitalize its Asian section of the zoo. Eventually they got a pair of fire foxes. The fire fox is also known as the red panda. Back when we were in college I was visiting Danielle during summer classes and we took a trip to Syracuse. While there we went to the zoo. I saw they had a sign for a red panda. Whoa! I only knew about the black and white ones! I was quite annoyed that it was just some raccoon-looking thing.

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Top 200 Photos: #173

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:01:39 +0000

What’s black and white and #173? Today’s Top 200 Photos entry.

photo #173 is:

For about a year, we were obsessed with Tai Shan, the baby panda at The National Zoo. We went at least once a month to go photograph him and watch him act all cute. This triptych is from his first birthday. The giant pink Popsicle is his birthday “cake”.

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