The Bronx Zoo’s newest resident is Sarka, a baby snow leopard. While Sarka was snoozing away the early afternoon, I was lucky enough to catch her mother, Dari, gently grooming the five-month-old cub.
Sarka means “shark” in Nepali, and her elusive species live high in the mountains of Nepal, Mongolia, Pakistan, India and China. Often called “ghosts of the mountains” thanks to their ability to evade detection and the remote locales they haunt, snow leopards are extremely well-adapted to the cold and can jump a remarkable 50 feet in a single bound.
The proud mom is doing a great job taking her of her daughter, but managed to take a few minutes for herself as she sat down a pace away and began to relax.
Dari and Sarka have their own enclosure and I was fortunate enough to get as close as possible despite the crowds. I’d forgotten schools were off, and lots of families took the opportunity to visit the zoo on a remarkably warm November day.
Because Sarka didn’t stir from her nap during my visit, here’s a photo of her with her mom via the Wildlife Conservation Society, the non-profit that runs the zoo:
Occupying the enclosure between the red panda and the snow leopards in the zoo’s Himalayan Highlands section was this Temminck’s tragopan, a type of pheasant. Her feather colors mark her as female in contrast to the bright plumage of male tragopans. The species is native to the mountain forests of Asia.
As is my custom, I spent most of my time at the big cat exhibits.
The lions occupy a large, grassy enclosure that mimics the savanna they’d normally call home, which means they have the option to ignore zoo guests and do their own thing. Every time I’ve been to the Bronx Zoo they’ve been far in the distance, and that was true this time too. Most were in their dens, leaving a lone male laying out in the grass with his back to visitors, making it clear he didn’t want to know anything or see anyone. And that’s cool. I’m glad the lions have the option to do that, even if it doesn’t make for the best photo opportunities.
Tiger Mountain is a different matter. Two Amur (Siberian) tigers were on the prowl in separate enclosures. In the larger of the two, a massive male put on a show for visitors as he scent-marked his territory, dousing a pair of trees with projectile urine before making a circuitous route that avoided the part of the enclosure near the viewing area.
I waited quite a while and was considering moving to the next enclosure when the big guy decided to strut his stuff, walking right past the big glass windows.
I know they’d never allow me to do it, and if I tried they’d throw me out of the zoo in about two nanoseconds, but I enjoyed the idea of bringing Bud to Tiger Mountain and holding him up to watch the passing tiger. Either he’d freak out or he’d try to paw bump the big cat. Could go either way, really.
Unfortunately there was only so much I could do about the smudges and dirt that had accumulated on the thick glass in some areas, which is why parts of these photos look blurry:
This red panda apparently took a cue from the lions and didn’t even move a limb during the 15 minutes I watched and waited. Can you imagine sleeping like that?
The geladas were apparently having some sort of meeting far up in the hills of their sizable enclosure, but this rock hyrax wandered right up to me and allowed me to snap a few close shots of her doing something hyraxian before someone’s kid pounded on the glass and sent her scurrying.
Once again I failed to bring the right lens to get decent shots of the giraffes and other animals who occupy large exhibits and often congregate in the distance. I tried to compensate by shooting in RAW format to capture more detail and crop if need be, but quickly ran out of storage on my Canon’s card and had to rely on my Galaxy smartphone camera for the last couple exhibits.
We’ll end with this fine fellow. Not a great shot from my phone cam, but I think he captures the spirit of the season with his languid movements and refusal to budge from the apparently comfortable dip in the ground he’d claimed. It’s 65 degrees in mid-November, but someone forgot to tell this bear. He looks ready to zonk out for the season.
