Sunday, June 10, 2007

Australia Zoo

The other cool thing we did while my dad and sister were in town was to visit Australia Zoo. Having been a fan of Steve Irwin for a while, I was really looking forward to visiting the zoo.

The first thing we came to was an enclosure with some birds of prey. They had a wedge-tailed eagle (darker than the one at Lone Pine because it's older) and a blue-winged kookaburra:




That kookaburra is different from the laughing one we saw during the show later in the afternoon. The laughing kookaburra is the one which makes that crazy, laughing call. This is the laughing kookaburra:



The aviary was next, and it contained quite a number of different birds. These two parrots seemed to be racing back and forth down the length of the enclosure:




There were a number of birds which appeared to be doves of some kind. The prettiest ones were these:



There were also quite a number of finches, including this bright red one:



They had a number of lorikeets as well (These are a bit like slightly enlarged parakeets, just in extremely bright colors. In fact, I've had a flock of them in the tree outside across the street when it had fruit. They are LOUD.):



At Australia Zoo, as at Lone Pine, there were are enclosures where you can walk right up to kangaroos and pet them, feed them, or just watch. My sister was quite thrilled to be able to pet them:



This little wallaby was being fed by hand:



They also had koalas to pet.

While walking through the kangaroo enclosures, we ran across this flock of ducks. They are quite pretty, but don't sound anything like ducks. They all sound like ducklings...not a proper quack among them:



We saw tigers:



and elephants:



We also saw one of the strangest mammals on earth, the echidna. This is one of the two kinds of mammals which lay eggs. They look a bit like porcupines:



We also got a close-up look at a cassowary:



and a rather large rhinoceros iguana. This guy is close to six feet long. He's a really large lizard:



We also saw one of the shows at the "Crocoseum." This one featured a number of birds, including some cockatoos:




There was also one large crocodile that was shown off:




That's all for now...

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Anonymous said...

Hi,
Great pics!
The fourth photo down, where you said the two parrots appear to be racing each other, the parrots are called Electus Parrots.

The bright red one is the female and the green one is the male. They are rare and beautiful birds living naturally only in one small patch in northern QLD and also a few in the islands.

I do wildlife rescue and have picked up a pet female one once. :)

Best Wishes, Kristy