Flamingos Fighting and Sleeping

Wildlife is an attractive subject for photography, particularly when the creature in question is colorful.  A flamingo certainly fits the bill with the vibrant pink coloring.  In addition, given that they have such long necks and shapely heads, they can curl themselves up in ways that make for an interesting image.  The Woodland Park Zoo had a bunch of flamingos (a prize for the person that tells me the collective noun for flamingos without having to Google it).

Most of the birds were just hanging around, wandering about the enclosure and eating/drinking.  A few of them were asleep and a couple seemed to be pretty aggravated with each other.  These guys were chasing around the place and generally getting worked up which seemed to be nothing more than an inconvenience to the other birds.  The ones trying to sleep seemed particularly unimpressed by the disturbance.

The way in which a flamingo will sleep makes for a cool shot.  Aside from the single leg pose (apparently easy even while unconscious), they curl their necks around and rest their heads on the back of their bodies, apparently facing backwards.  The curve of the neck and the way in which the head sits in their back feathers is a great shape and zooming right in to get a tight shot of this seemed to make a lot of sense.  (Besides, when you are carrying a long lens all day, shooting with it must be the right thing to do huh?)

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