Lorikeet and Secretary Bird

A couple more birds just flew in from the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park. The lorikeet is a multicolored parrot from Australia that lives on nectar. At the enclosure at the park you can buy little cups of nectar and the fearless birds will land on your hand to partake. Which is all very convenient for taking a few photos.

The secretary bird attracts a crowd not because of his colors, which are not very spectacular at all, but because of his gawky shape and the feather quills that stick out from the back of his head. Many sites claim the bird gets its name from these quills and the white and black tunic-like coloring of the bird which is suggestive of a male secretary from bygone-days, but the posting for the secretary bird at the Wild Animal Park's website states that the name of the bird most likely comes from the Arabic saqr-et-tair, or “hunter bird.” Anyhow, the bird struts up and down his enclosure constantly looking for prey, and when he finds a bug or whatever it is he is interested in, he jumps up in the air and stomps on it. Quite entertaining actually!

See these and other birds in the Bird Photo Gallery

Pink-Backed Pelican

Don't you find pelicans a very fascinating bird? I don't know what it is about them particularly that makes them so compelling; perhaps it is that they look kind of comical, and the fact that they can even fly is a surprise in a way as they seem so out of proportion in every way. But on the wing they are so graceful. This is a pink-backed pelican which hails from Africa. I took this photo at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park in San Diego County. You can read on their website about all the different kinds of pelicans at the San Diego Zoo and Park.

See this photo of a pink-backed pelican in the bird photo gallery.

Western Rueppell's Vulture

I'm starting to worry here at the moment that you might be getting sick of photos of flowers, so I thought I'd shock you out of your "flower-daze" with this photo of a vulture. Yes, a vulture! This handsome guy is a Western Rueppell's Vulture, which I know for a fact because I had the good sense to also take a photo of the sign in front of his enclosure at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. These guys come from the northern two-thirds of Africa...so the sign says. (I'm not an ornithologist yet.)

If you're wondering how I got this photo looking like this, after adjusting for white balance and color in Photoshop, I then created some layers to help me darken the background, and I finished up by putting some "omni" lights in a couple of places that I wanted lightened up. Had to do all of this because the zoo wouldn't let me take him to the studio for a photo shoot.

See this Western Rueppell's Vulture in all his glory in the Birds Photo Gallery.