Malayan Tigers, Snow Leopards and Amur Leopards - San Diego Zoo

I spent a few hours with the big cats at the San Diego Zoo this morning. In addition to the Malayan Tigers, I also stopped by to see what the Amur and Snow Leopards were up to.

Here's one of the two young male Amur Leopards.

I only saw one of the Snow Leopards, I'm not sure where the other one was. Lately I've been taking only my 300mm lens with me on Zoo trips. It's great for when the animals are a fair distance away, but when they get up close I'm often out of luck. Anything closer than about 10' and the lens won't even focus. The grating on the old cat enclosures is pretty badly oxidized in places, which makes it fairly bright and very tough to completely focus away at times.

I did spend most of my time today watching Conner, the almost 2-year old Malayan Tiger. A good portion of that time was spent talking to other people, since Conner would go for half-hour or so stretches just hanging out at the very top of the enclosure. 

When he did finally get around to coming down the hill it was usually only for a few minutes at a time.

In between checking out all the big cats I did get a look at the newest baby Panda, who was sleeping in the top of a tree.

Click here to see a few more pictures from Sunday, March 17, 2013 at the San Diego Zoo.