{Lifestyle Portraiture} Learning by seeing - Old favorites and New discoveries

---- Warning - this is a long long post with tons of pictures ---

For those of you following the MJ family, know that we love animals - wild and domesticated. Most of our travel jaunts involve animals at some level. Be it seeing coyoties and bears while hiking like we did during our summer trip, observing the great blue heron during an afternoon walk, or spotting frogs during a swim in the lake. We love the unexpected animal sighting but also enjoy a visit to the zoo. So much so that when we travel to other large cities we try and take in a quick trip to the zoo to get our fill of animals.  Most zoos including the local ones in Chicago have the typical old favorities - lions, tigers, bears and the like. But we were in for a treat when we visited the zoo during an weekend getaway trip (check the next post on the getaway details ;)). We saw animals that we had not heard or seen before. It was a great experience as we learnt something new and rediscovered some old time favorities. This zoo is definitely worth the visit and maybe a repeat the next time we are in town.

Old time favorites - Mr Bear was almost giving us a "so glad you came, come on give me a five" look.

Have you heard the expression "to stare like a leopard" - no, that's cause I made it up. But if there ever was such a phrase, this is the most appropriate picture to go with it. I am so glad for being on the other side of the fence. This guy was so focused on something - he was staring without blinking for a good 15-20 minutes.

Have you ever seen a Malaysia Tapir? Well, now is your chance.

Or a Tarkin who seems to be smiling :)

How about performing dental work on a camel?

We saw a blue jay and a woodpecker busy at work. Notice the worms that the blue jay is eating! - yummy :)

My hands down absolute favorite was this guy - so majestic yet so deadly. The lone wolf - he was simply stunning. He was pacing up and down and stopped to howl something. Maybe it was the coyote in the next enclosure.

There were so many different kind of monkeys that were either sleeping like this guy or swinging around from branch to branch like this one.

How about a kimono dragon and a crocodile?

Of course, who does not love sweet lovable tortoise or the dangerous puma/mountain cat!

I guess you can say that we really did have a great time at the zoo and learnt so many things including some really sad facts.
1) Did you know that there are three subspecies of tiger that are extinct! - three!!!!
2) Did you know that the Amur tiger is the largest cat in the world
3) Did you know that a common kitty cat can out run a tiger...imagine that!