A trip to Melbourne Zoo (4 Feb 2018)

With family visiting from overseas who absolutely love animals, especially cats, we naturally had to ensure a trip to one of the three Zoos Victoria sites. On her first visit to Australia, we took Jasminka to Healesville Sanctuary and so this time we arranged to have an afternoon at Melbourne Zoo with a couple of extra special encounters. We arranged to meet up a little over an hour before the first encounter so we could take Jasminka around to see some of her favourite animals.

Even though we were not meeting up until the early afternoon, we once again arrived early to Melbourne Zoo, eager to visit many of the wonderful animals, especially the big cats. Our first stop was to visit Binjai, the Sumatran tigress, on the Trail of the Elephants. Binjai was busy eating some grass and sniffing around her habitat, seemingly playing a game of hide-and-seek with visitors.

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A trip to Melbourne Zoo (9 January 2018)

We once again headed into Melbourne Zoo to take advantage of the early opening times and hopefully catch sight of Miska, the beautiful snow leopard, like we did on our last visit. Arriving shortly before the gates opened at 8am, we queued with other eager visitors. Once the gates opened we headed directly for the Carnivore’s Trail, passing by the empty Lion enclosure (the boys were still in their beds) we found that there were some necessary works going on and Carnivore’s Trail was closed until 9am, so we checked in on Isabella, the Philippines Crocodile.

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A trip to Melbourne Zoo (23 December 2017)

Once again we headed into Melbourne Zoo in the hope of capturing some good photos on the new Carnivore’s Trail. As usual we arrived prior to the gates opening and queued up with other keen visitors. Once inside our first port of call was, naturally, to try and photograph the snow leopards. The animals, like us, are still getting used to the new enclosures and for some, including two of the snow leopards, still adjusting to smells, sights and sounds of Melbourne Zoo. Seeing little evidence of any movement in the snow leopard enclosure, we moved on with the intention of returning later in the day.

A little further down the trail is the fantastic new Sumatran Tiger enclosure. Here we eventually noticed Indrah hiding out in the back among the foliage showing how well she can camouflage herself.

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Nikon School at Melbourne Zoo (19 and 24 August 2017)

Nikon in partnership with Melbourne Zoo and as part of the Photo Ark exhibition, provided the opportunity to get some expert advice on wildlife photography from award winning photographer Jay Town and the chance to play with some of their cool gear. Naturally, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out some different gear and to get some expert advice on how to make more from our current gear. We loved the idea so much that we signed up to do the course twice and both times got great advice and really learnt something, so this post covers both sessions.

The course started with a brief presentation from Jay.

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Jay gave us some great tips on wildlife photography and shared his passion for wildlife photography, particularly at Melbourne Zoo.

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