October 2013: Giraffes, tigers, and Australia

I took the first Monday of the month off work to visit London Zoo with Emily and Tim, where, excitingly, Emily had booked us in to feed the giraffes!

We saw iguanas and frogs and gorillas and fish and camels and meerkats and lions and penguins and tortoises and lemurs and anteaters (oh my)!

We also saw one of the resident tigers being fed, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, so we knew exactly where to stand for the second feed to get an amazing view of him bolting from his favourite rock about 200m away to grab what looked like a horse leg from the other side of the pen.

Since I knew it was going to happen, I got a video of it:

---

Feeding the giraffes was amazing! The attendant gave us a quick overview, then caught the three creatures' attention, and gave us a couple of bunches of sliced carrots each to feed them.

The giraffes happily took the carrots, one at a time, grabbing them from our hands with their long and dextrous tongues. I got giraffe slobber on me. After they were done, then strode elegantly back outside to finish their meal with some twigs and bark.

---

The day out gave me a good opportunity to get to grips with my new camera and find out what it does well. I'm rather pleased with what it managed, so I've sorted all my shots into the best 20 or 30 from the day.

---

Last week, Emily and I went to the Australia art exhibition at the RA. It's a good selection of aboriginal art alongside some more contemporary and traditional pieces. My favourite were some of the photography, photo-realistic pieces, and of course the aboriginal story art.

---

And to round everything up, here's a photo of Emily's cat Kilo guarding a bean.

He takes his duties very seriously.