Flamingos, finally!

Today the Woodland Park Zoo had its members preview of the new flamingo exhibit, the ads for which are all over town. I never quite managed to ask for the morning off to go first thing and then meetings were scheduled. Fortunately, I was able to run out over the lunch hour to go see them.

I was expecting the flamingos to be indoors, enjoying tropical warmth and humidity. Instead, they were outdoors, huddled together, in the cool grayness (while Seattle had a record-breaking 88 degree day last Saturday, it's back down 60 or so of late).

The flamingos are Chilean flamingos, which live from Chile's coastal salt marshes to high altitude salt lakes up to 14,000 feet. Despite this less-than-tropical range, the flock today looked cold and a little pissed. They definitely seemed cranky, even going after each other now and then. I took a number of pictures, working especially hard to get a shot of their black under feathers. The results made me realize that great wildlife photography (or maybe even great photography in general) is bringing order (or meaning) out of chaos. Cranky flamingos have no interest in order.