Squirrel monkeys at Wellington Zoo

The last time I went to the Wellington Zoo I photographed the squirrel monkeys and showed the resulting images to my mother in Auckland. Impressed, she went into the Auckland Zoo to photograph some for herself. Unfortunately she was somewhat disappointed there and didn’t manage to get any good images and said it was really hard to see the squirrel monkeys there. So she booked a flight to Wellington and back on the same day so I could take her to the Wellington Zoo.

On arrival we realised a very big mistake in our planning. School holidays! Add to that the recent opening of the Asia area and that equated to LOTS of visitors to the zoo. Parking was an issue but eventually we found a space recently vacated by someone leaving. We headed straight to the squirrel monkeys, adjusted the bench seat to a position that suited and sat down with the camera and long lenses.

Because of the reflections on the glass I have found it better to have distance between the glass and myself using a long lens and wait until there are no people around. People create reflections in the glass, so a lot of our time was spent waiting for those brief moments in between groups of people.

I am really happy with the results from this trip also and hope that my mother has achieved similar results. The glass was a bit dirty but one of the zoo keepers assured me it was cleaned every morning. The mess was on the inside so all I can say is that they are grubby little monkeys – but that isn’t really fair, the monkeys obviously enjoy the interaction with people through the glass and that is where the mess comes from. One of the babies was really interested in a hand that had been put on the glass.

Next time I think we will be planning the day a little better – earlier in the morning because the light goes from that area at about 2pm, and visit on a day that is not school holidays.

A trip to the Zoo

There was a special on entry to the Wellington Zoo, so we bought a couple of tickets and planned a trip there for today. Yesterday's weather was fantastic so I had hoped for the same today. It was raining as we headed down State Highway 2 towards Wellington City, though it did clear up before we got there. Just past the point of no return for going home I realised that my monopod was at home still. Bugger!

I had also made the decision not to bring lots of lenses as I hadn't taken the 'Bigma' to the zoo before and wanted to know what I could do with it there. Unfortunately it requires the monopod. The other zoom lens I own which I could have used without a monopod was of course at home too. Long story short, I now have two monopods and one of them will ALWAYS stay in the car! So much for cheap tickets!

The zoo itself is in a state of restructuring, so many of the exhibits are closed off for renovation and others had no animals to be seen in them due to the high winds and not so nice weather. Maybe I should have done what they were doing and stayed in! I hadn't seen the Bolivian Spider Monkeys before, or the changes that had been made to the area they are housed in. It was great to see glass viewing windows at long last! Of course the sun chose that time to shine and reflections were everywhere. Should have stayed in bed!

I gave up on the monkeys and headed to the red pandas. Now they were being very cooperative and I managed to get some shots there. After walking round the entire zoo, we ended up back at the spider monkeys. I ended up sitting and waiting for people to go and monkeys to come close enough. By staying back a good distance (where the seat was) I managed to avoid the reflections completely. So the day wasn't a total waste, I have some very cute monkey shots :)