Photos taken with an Olympus D500L Digital Camera and reduced in size to shorten download time.
Mother Nature at
Animal Kingdom & Epcot
Animal Kingdom
I don't normally get along well with Mother Nature - and, therefore, I'm not well acquainted with many of her creatures. This will become apparent as I fail, miserably, at correctly identifying the subjects of many of the photos below. Many thanks to my friend, Toine, for his assistance with the identification.
Along the paths that lead from the main entrance thru the oasis, there were a variety of birds just hanging out. Photo 1. Photo 2.
A short distance into the park, and you come face to face with the Tree of Life. It is truly an awesome sight, that no photo can adequately capture. There is intricate sculpture along the trunk of the tree, depicting lots of creatures. The previous photo was taken from a distance. The photos that follow are closer shots, and I did not reduce their size as much (to preserve as much of the details as possible) - so they may take a bit longer to load.
This portion of the tree shows a rhino towards the top center with a squid? just below that and a snake off to the right. I believe this section is just immediately above the section shown in the previous photo.
In this section, I see what I believe to be a tiger towards the center, foreground, and a bird in the lower right. Towards the lower left, an elephant foot? just above the branch - with a paw (the tiger's paw?) resting below. I think the figure to the left of the tiger's face is some sort of rodent?
A baboon? and an eagle with a seahorse to its left This section has a lion? and a spidery creature towards the left, the mouth and nose of a bear-like creature at the very left, and a fish near the bottom right. Just below the lion, there's either a snake or the neck/head of a dinosaur, and a dove or bird to the right of that. Also, I believe that's a starfish on the bottom left
There are lots of other sections that I didn't photograph - and I'm sure many more animals carved in the sections shown above that I did not notice.
I thought these street lamps looked interesting - located just outside the entrance area for "It's Tough To Be A Bug."
Over in Africa, there weren't too many animals out along the Kilimanjaro Safari route. However, I did see a bunch of crocodiles sunning themselves. Further along, there was this one (an antelope???). And, finally, an ostrich. There WERE other animals along the safari. However, the vehicle was travelling too fast and/or the the ride was too bumpy to allow for photography - at least with my camera.
At the Safari exit, two cast members were having fun directing people down toward the "Express" train to Conservation Station. They were talking, sarcastically, about this amazing transportation breakthru that moves as fast as 7 miles per hour!! The train is kind of unique, though - with two rows of benches running the length of each passenger car. This has each guest sitting facing the side of the train - which is mostly open.
The train ride offers guests a glimpse of the behind the scenes goings on at Animal Kingdom. You can see the fencing that keeps the animals from going where they should not - and also the buildings that house the animals each night. At Conservation Station, there were various animals receiving care from the cast members, including this goat??
On the inside of the restroom stall doors, don't be surprised to find informational signs - "The Scoop on Poop"
Epcot
I don't know if it was because I was in Animal Kingdom mode, but, I noticed some of Mother Nature's creations at Epcot, too.
The first thing I noticed at Epcot were the floating flowers (I'm not really sure what these are or how they stay put) in the body of water between Futureworld and World Showcase. I know I've "seen" these before... I just never paid much attention to them in the past.
On the World Showcase side, this flamingo was walking fairly close to the path. This group remained a safer distance from the guests.
I don't know about the nutritional value, but this duck (or whatever it is) was feasting on popcorn that some of the guests were throwing at it.
