Holiday Weekend at the San Diego Zoo - Part 2

I went back to the San Diego Zoo on Monday morning of the recent Labor Day weekend. Over the last year or so I've met a few others who like to photograph the big cats, and we've become friends. We see each other almost every weekend, and many of us seem to wind up at the same place at the same time, and then when things get quiet we'll often wander off for cold drinks or coffee together. Nothing was planned, but on Monday it just worked out that we all showed up at the tiger enclosure first thing in the morning, and about 6 or 7 of us wound up spending the entire day there. We probably spent much more time talking than we did shooting pictures, since tigers spend more time napping than they do walking around, but we had a great time. We even had a chance to spend a few minutes in the off-exhibit area with Tiga.

Here are a few shots of Connor, the just-over-2-years-old male Malayan Tiger.

From a technical standpoint this is not such a great shot, but it does work to show just how big those cow femur bones are. They get these for a mid-day snack a few days a week. Those things weigh about 8-10 pounds, and the tigers can walk, run and even jump with the bones in their mouths as if they weighed nothing. To help put things in perspective, Connor weighs about 260 pounds right now.

Connor seems to truly enjoys these things. He can easily spend half an hour to 45 minutes just sitting there chewing on a bone. Every now and then you can hear a loud snap as he breaks through part of it.

Tiga, the young female, came out later in the afternoon.

It was warm, so she hung out in the pool for a while.

Tiga likes to spend time at the lower glass window viewing area, she seems to really like watching little kids. We don't like trying to get shots through the glass, so we wait at the middle viewing area for her to occasionally poke her head around the corner. Sometimes we have to wait quite a while, but it's generally worth it.

Click here to see more Malayan Tiger images (and one shot of a duck in an odd position) from Monday, September 2, 2013 at the San Diego Zoo.