Wounded Monarch Grazing —
This past weekend Jenny and I became members of the Minnesota Zoo. So now we’re members at the Science Museum, the Arboretum, and the Zoo… Hmm — doesn’t joint membership at multiple civic cultural venues (past a certain number) make civil-marriage laws kick in somewhere, or something?
Aaanyway… The zoo on this particular Saturday was really a zoo — literally and figuratively! There was an enormous amount of people there, and Jenny and I felt very out of place without a baby stroller… I mean, they ran in packs! Well, perhaps herd is the better word — I’d think a pack could change direction all together a bit faster, while a herd sorta lumbers around to a different tack…
The Minnesota Zoo’s got a new butterfly tent this year — apparently required some USDA certification, etc… I managed to snag a lot of really good pictures in the butterfly tent!
For most of the trek I’d been using my 70-200mm, with Tony’s 1.4x extender (gives me up to 280mm on my 30D, or roughly 450mm 35mm film equivalent), which got me up-close-and-personal with many of the larger animals. Unfortunately the extender seemed to make most of the images fairly soft… I’m really going to need to play with that a bit more, and see if I can’t improve my results with telephoto (which I don’t shoot as often as I should).
However, once we got into the butterfly tent I was in my (recent, at least) element — the 60mm Macro lens came on, and I got up-close-and-personal (really) with the butterflies.
This particular Monarch butterfly appears to have been wounded — perhaps an overzealous visitor…