As usual, when there’s nothing else to do, go to the zoo. I really had no expectations today, if I would get one nice picture then it would be a bonus. It would be a nice day out, in any case. When I got to the first wolf enclosure and saw the shutter speeds I was getting, I knew it was going to be tough to get any keepers today because it was quite dark.
At the first reindeer enclosure I witnessed stress behaviour and I was very surprised to see that, I didn’t think that reindeer are smart enough to get stressed. But after a while I found the source of this behaviour, it is mating season and the big bull was eager for some action and this female apparently didn’t appreciate his approach attempts. But those antlers… I don’t think I’ve ever seen antlers that big on anything at all!
At the fox enclosure I was pleasantly surprised, I finally saw a fox! Two foxes, actually. They had finally put some new foxes in the enclosure and they are nearly not as shy as the previous fox had been. I have appreciation that all animals need their privacy, but if you’re going to keep an animal which is not a threatened species then I think it would be nice if you could choose some individuals which are not quite so people shy. Out of these two, one kept off at a distance which wouldn’t have been a problem for my Mega-Tamron if it wasn’t for the chain link fence behind the animal. The other fox was roaming around and didn’t want to sit still for pictures (when it did pause, it was too close!) but the biggest problem was the very low level of light. ISO 3200 was not enough and I don’t want to go higher, even with the 6D. But anyway, it’s good to know that the foxes are there, maybe it will work in the winter when the snow reflects some light.
After all these times I’ve visited, I’ve yet to take a good picture of a lynx so I wanted to concentrate my efforts on them. I took a few frames of the sleeping bears and then passed by the other enclosures until I got to the lynx. But alas, not a whisker in sight, so I walked back all the way to the foxes for another effort. When the feeding time was approaching, I went back to the lynxes knowing that they would be out by then, and yes they were. I saw two, and heard the third, but just couldn’t locate where the sounds were coming from. Until after a few minutes, I heard some rustling and looked up – there was a lynx up the tree! I have never seen that before, I didn’t even think about looking up when I was trying to locate the source of that sound! As exciting as it was, it was less amusing when I realised that it was the sound of distress. The poor guy couldn’t come back down again, it tried a couple of times but then lost its courage about halfway and climbed back up again.
There’s a sheet metal around the tree trunk a few meters off the ground to prevent the lynxes from climbing up the trees and making an escape. So the only way this lynx could have gotten up is if it had jumped from a big rock close by and that must have been some mighty jump! If the lynx would only come down to the top of the sheet I think it could jump down, but it didn’t really even get very close to it before giving up.
I stood there about one and a half hours but the cub just sat up there, or climbed even further up. The keepers came with some tools so they could remove the sheet metal, hoping that it will encourage the cub to climb down but seeing that it would take quite some time before the plate was gone and even longer time after until the lynx would attempt to come down, I left. I hope it makes it!
My annual card to Järvzoo expires on Monday, I think I’m going to buy a new one! When I said that I wanted to get a good lynx picture, never in a millions years did I think it would be like this!
