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2008, Animalblog by Terry Costales
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Here is Tatiana on Sept 29, 2007 looking alive and well. Due to incompetence at the Zoo and the malicious idiocy of a few young men, she and one of those young men are now deceased. A needless tragedy that ought never have happened.
One should build wild animal enclosures with as much protection for the animals from the public as the public from the animals. We all know bridges and buildings in San Francisco must be built, or retrofitted, to withstand an earthquake the magnitude of which we may never see. So I assumed (incorrectly, as we all did) that a wild animal enclosure would be built with worst case scenarios in mind as well.
I have read comments by citizens calling for the zoo's permanent closure but that is just a knee-jerk response. Zoos provide valuable sevices to the public, including breeding programs of our most endangered species, education and research. If built and maintained properly an excellent zoo can be as much a part of the cultural fabric of our city as are its library, symphony, parks and museums.
Every major disaster gives us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. The shipping industry learned a hard lesson from the sinking of the Titanic. After the Loma Prieta earthquake our building codes changed. Let's only hope we learn and apply valuable and obvious lessons from this, our current zoo catastrophe.
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This photo was taken Sept 29, 2007. The Black Crowned Crane
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I don't know what kind of bird this is. Some kind of stork-like-vulture-thingy. It was in the walk-through aviary. Scary huh?
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Another view of the distant and beautiful Harrier.
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This photo shows the ruffled feathers on the back and white feathers edging the wings of the Black Swan.
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Their new home is a well designed habitat and hopefully all the exhibits there can be brought up to this standard.
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This juvenile Heermann's gull exhibits its main identifying marks clearly: black feet, red bill and dusky body. As an adult, its head will become pure white.
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There was this one lone white pelican at the nature center that day. It was probably an injured bird being nursed back to health, or it just knew a good hand-out when it saw one.
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This shot was back lit and little more than a silhouette, but it was the only close-up I got. So I digitally adjusted it much more than I would normally.
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According to Wikipedia the name comes from "feld-fere meaning "traveller through the fields", probably from their constantly moving, foraging habits."
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When we got to the Zoo, we discovered dozens of them perched in the trees. Others were perched on buildings ledges, while several were already nesting.
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Bald comes from the Old English "pie-bald", which means partially white.
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The Great Spotted
Yes, there is a Lesser Spotted but I never saw one.
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That means I said, "Honey, get a shot of that starling
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The word plumbeous means leaden, dull. The hawk is half grey thereby clearly earning its name.
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They are known for "walking on water", because their very long toes allow them to walk on floating vegetation. Unfortunately, the ones we saw were in the mud the whole time and so we never witnessed this behavior.
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