Red Panda

Red Panda, a photo by DisHippy on Flickr.

The red panda is a cousin of the raccoon, while the more famous giant panda is more closely related to bears. These engaging animals make their home in mountain forests and bamboo thickets, where they live in small groups or alone. They are active mainly at night and spend their days sleeping in trees, out of the reach of most predators. Red pandas are primarily vegetarians, with bamboo shoots a favorite food, but they also eat small animals.

The number of wild red pandas is declining as their bamboo forests are cleared for human development.
sourced from www.stlzoo.org

This May will be two years of my having my Nikon D90 and for all the times I've been visiting the St. Louis Zoo with my camera, I've never seen the Red Panda. Finally, on Monday I was up at the Zoo early in the morning and this beautiful girl was out. I spent quite a long time shooting photos here. At this point she had actually noticed me there and almost posed for the photo. This was a great day for shooting at the Zoo, I'll be sharing more from this day for sure.

Please let me know what you all think as any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

Enjoy!