The Last of the shots from Adventure World in Wakayama

There was a dolphin and whale show happening at the largest of the pools in the aquarium complex.

Dancing with the dolphins.
Flying with a whale.
Cheeky whale. Better give it the fish now.
A Sea otter, contemplating just how cute it is.
When you feed them, they get pushed into a higher energy state.

Low energy.

Meerkats, recharging in the sun.
Eye Ram Ewe
Stereotypical, but bananas ARE good. It's a chimp, not a monkey.

Birds!

Here are some of the birds that were represented at Adventure World in Wakayama. This mackaw greats visitors as they first come to the park.

A horned owl, which was thoroughly unimpressed with being photographed.

This little bit of grey fluff is a baby Adelaide penquin.
All grown up.

The Emperor Penguin family.

It will bite your head, it really will. Your head will fit in its beak.

(no, the pelican did NOT bite me)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Torpedo!

A Red Crowned Crane, a very large beautiful bird and one of the rarest in the world.

Pandas!

This last weekend I went to 'Adventure World' in Shirahama, Wakayama. They have a panda breeding program there. We went to see the baby pandas but they were not on display. I did get a few shots of their father Eimei, and their half siblings Aihin and Meihin.

Emei, taking a rest on his tire.

One of the twins born in 2006, snacking on some bamboo.

Aihin and Meihin wrestle to find out which is cutest.

It's ok, they are still friends. :)

And a lesser panda!

I'll be putting up some more shots from Adventure World soon!

Spiders!

One of the first close-up shots of a spider I have taken.

Agelena Opulenta, surrounded by leftovers on the wall of the school I teach in.

A freshly molted spider, possibly Nephila Clavata.

Tetragnata praedonia, the long-jawed spider. You can see the jaws, underneath the 4 front legs.

So this is the full size of a picture my camera takes on the highest resolution!

er... no it isn't. Looks like blogger resizes these automatically. The blogger generated image is 1067x1600.
Argiope bruennichii, Wakayama

This is how big the 'face' would be (once you click it), the original image is 2848 x 4272 pixels.

This one was waving his pedipalps up and down, busting a move.

Agelena Opulenta, found on a hedge in Wakayama.

Nephila clavata, Wakayama.
This very large spider (body length 4-5cm) builds huge webs about 1.5 to 2m across. Here it is just about to dine on a small bug that has been trapped in the web.

Courtship is dangerous!

Start up of the photoblog!

Welcome, to my blog which will feature photographs taken almost exclusively by me.
I hope to use this to motivate myself to improve my photography and to let others see just what I have been taking photos of.

The first few posts will likely be rather large as I put up some of the photos I have taken recently and work out how this blog software works.