National Aviary – Pittsburgh

We got to the National Aviary in Pittsburgh just after it opened at 10 AM....early enough to find parking very easily in the aviary’s parking lot. It was a good outing on a cold day just as the Phipps Conservatory had been the day before. A few of the exhibits are birds in large cages or enclosures but most the birds are in open areas and sometimes they will walk right up to where you are standing on the walk. It makes taking pictures a lot easier.  I developed a strategy for causing my camera to autofocus on the bird rather than the wire mesh or smudged glass (pick birds further from the wire mesh, point the camera at something else that was about the distance to the bird…then go back to the bird). The snowy owl in the slide show below was photographed using that technique. All the birds were inside except for the snowy owl, bald eagle, and Andean Condor (near the end of the slide show).

Something l learned that surprised me was about penguin’s beaks. They get furrows in them starting at the part closest to the head and extending further toward the tip as they older. This is an old penguin!