Little Monkeys

....Or..... Small Primates to be precise!

One of the first areas of Drusillas Park contains a run of small primate enclosures, Tamarins and Marmosets. This is one of my favourite areas of the zoo as they're always active and there's usually plenty going on, however the lighting is poor and the enclosures are glass fronted, so photographing them does present a few problems. I decided yesterday to spend a little time early morning trying to get a few portraits of the little blighters....

The first enclosure of these Primates is a mixed exhibit which features 3 male Common Marmoset and a pair of Pygmy Marmoset, the Commons are bold and active, easily seen, the Pygmys are smaller(!) slower, quieter and not always that visible, sometimes you can spend a fair while looking for one only to find it sitting a top a branch stairing strainght back at you!

Although the part of the next animals exhibit is before the mixed exhibit, the main part of the display comes afterwards so that's why I class the Silvery Marmoset as the second enclosure rather than the first.

Next we come to the Cotton Topped Tamarins, which I have to admit I do have a soft spot for, they are right little characters, full of atitude and look really striking.

Then last in this line are the Goeldi's Monkey, these striking black primates are usually very active, a little nervous and can often be heard giving high pitched calles to each other, the enclosure is that annoying mixture of rather dark to rather bright so whilst they really like it, it doesn't help getting your setting right when it comes to photography!

After that we then have to walk past a few other enclosure where we then come to the last two small primates in what is known as the 'upper' zoo. These are out Emperor Tamarins and Red-handed Tamarins, both these species are bold, very active and therefore need slightly larger enclosures to allow for their almost constant movement. Especially first thing in the morning they like to re-establish what's going on around them and where they are in the world, this means that they are very inquisitive, whilst in one respect this makes photographing them easy, it also means that you do tend to end up with lots of staing pictures.......

This is where my walk ended, so I wasn't able to complete the set by including the two other species we have further round the zoo, Geffroys Marmosets and Gloden Lion Tamarin, but I'm sure they'll feature sometime soon.