Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium
On the Monday before we left Omaha, we made a family trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. I did a little math the day before, and even with my military discount, buying the yearly membership was only going to cost about $30 more than purchasing 5 individual tickets; so that what I did.
Lol, I obviously don’t live in Omaha and I’m not sure we’ll even go back within a year, but I like zoos, so it seemed like the right thing to do.
Plus there is a reciprocity program that will get me 50% off tickets prices to a few local zoos we may end up visiting.
The first animal pictures I took weren’t even zoo residents.
At every eating location, the birds were very comfortable around people. That house sparrow above landed just a couple of feet from me, and didn’t seem in any particular hurry to move.
I loved the colors on this Brewer’s Blackbird.
Then we were off to ‘Africa’.
This is just a preference of mine, but if I’m going to photograph animals in a zoo and there’s no way to hide the fact that they’re in an enclosure, then I’ll probably try to include the people observing them into the image in some way or another. (you’ll see this again a few more times throughout this post)
I took several pictures of the lions, but the one above was my favorite, so for the sake of not overloading you with too many pictures, that’s the one I’ll post.
I also managed to somehow get a half decent shot of this Cheetah relaxing in the grass.
We did not see Pumba anywhere. Maybe the lions got him? 😎
The bubble blowing Rhino
I came around the corner, and Timmy had struck up a conversation with one of the docents. He was explaining that he hoped Hilly (the female rhino) would get in the water at some point, since she sometimes blows bubbles.
About 5 minutes later she did just that!
Everybody loves monkeys!
Okay, so this was just a bronze statue of an orangutan, but I liked the scene so took the shot anyway. We did also get to see some live monkeys.
The gorillas were all behind glass enclosures. But in some ways, that almost made interacting with them slightly more possible.
High ISO reptile photos
So this was not the sharpest image that I could have gotten of an alligator ,but you’re just going to have to believe me when I tell you how dark it was in that exhibit. I don’t have the newest camera, but it’s still leaps and bounds above my old 20D when it comes to high ISO. I would have been hesitant to go above ISO 1600 with that camera. I was a little nervous about 12,800 for this shot, but denoise in Lightroom is pretty amazing.
This rattlesnake shot was another good ISO 12,800 example. Between denoise and adaptive color, Lightroom turned the image on the right (that I might not have even attempted to edit in the past) into something almost shareable on the left.
The Aquarium
If there was one exhibit where I probably should have used my phone instead of my Canon 80D a bit more often, it was inside the aquarium. That said, I did capture what was probably my favorite shot of the day in that dark room with a 70-200mm lens attached.
I also had a few other shots in a similar vein that came together almost exactly as I’d planned them …
I did get fish picture that I didn’t hate.
Okay, this feels a little like cheating.
Many of you may be aware that I take a lot of bird pictures when I’m out and about back in Arizona … all in the wild. So I feel a little bit guilty about including shots of captive birds in this post. A bit of a mitigating factor though, is that most of these were taken in large open exhibits, such as the rainforest.
These burrowing owls are seen pretty regularly here in Arizona, but apparently we had to go all the way to Nebraska to see one up close.
Birds weren’t the only thing flying in the rain forest exhibit
Yep, that’s a bat!
Butterflies
There is a dedicated butterfly house that I didn’t discover until near the end of our day. I basically just walked through and snapped a few shots, but I could have easily spent an hour or more in this exhibit.
Centenarian?
I can’t say for certain this was the oldest creature in not only the zoo, but maybe the city. But I if I had to make a bet …
The American Teen
Finally, we arrive at some of the highest maintenance and most expensive to care for “animals” we encountered that day. 😎
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Love the photos! Looks like a great time. And your daughter's dress exactly like my daughter does.