Trip to the Maryland Zoo

I had not been to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore since I visited on a field trip in elementary school. But the only week my boyfriend and I decided to take a day trip up there. It was so much fun!

Our first stop was the polar bear, who was sleeping because it was too hot to be doing anything active! And I got my own pic with this metal bear statue (which was very hot in the sun!)

The highlight of the visit were the baby animals! We saw a baby Colobus monkey and a baby lemur. I swear I must have taken 100 pictures just of these two animals! I may not go ga-ga over human babies, but put my in front of a baby animal and I will turn to total mush!

Chimps always amaze me because they are so much like people. We watched them for a few minutes, grooming each other and using body language like humans do! It's an eerie feeling when you look at apes like this: they're so similar to us, yet our "societies" have evolved so differently!








And then we saw other African animals; it felt like we were in The Lion King. Giraffes, an elephant, and a zebra who had quite the shapely figure (like this Trace Adkins song). We even saw a real life Zazu (also known as a hornbill).

We also saw animals that weren't meant to be in the zoo. There were groundhogs in the giraffe exhibit, and swallows had made nests in the light fixtures.


 My second favorite part of the trip (since you can't top baby animals!) was the aviary. We saw a spoonbill stork couple making a nest! She was sitting on the nest (there may or may not have been an egg in it), and the male would bring her sticks which she would arrange around herself. Seeing those natural behaviors from wild animals in captivity is really awesome!

And there was no signage about these two cute little birds, so I don't know what kind they are. They had beautiful blue and teal feathers on their backs and wings. Anyone know what species they are?

Animals have always fascinated me, so it's no surprise that I have a fun time at this zoo! People from DC may complain that you have to pay to get into the Maryland Zoo, but remember: you're helping to take care of the animals!