It’s got to be said, rhea are spectacularly stupid birds. This is most apparent when they are drinking. They snap at the water in what looks to be a highly ineffecient method of drinking and end up drenching thier heads. They will then shake their head to remove the excess water and, in the case of the rhea at Amazona Zoo proceed to bash thier heads against the fence because they haven’t moved far enough away. Of course nothing can beat the fact that one of the 4 that are at Amazona decided to just keel over and die on the opening day in front of a, thankfully very understanding, public.

Being a new enclosure the plant life, such that there is, hasn’t really had time to establish so the birds do, unfortunately, have rather a bland background to photograph against. Grey bird on brown background isn’t the best of combinations but hopefully the ones I’ve got aren’t too bad. I’ve also been trying some interesting shots with flash leaving the background completely black but I’ve yet to have a good one of those come out yet. Perhaps next weekend.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the rhea gallery in the cromer zoo section.

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