"Feather"dale Visit

Hello,

2 weeks ago I got a call from a friend from Phoenix whom I had not spoken since 2007. It was a pleasant surprise and came to know that she was visiting Sydney for a week to tour around. She arrived over the weekend and had shown interest to visit a zoo which was quite close to our house. It is a 10 minute drive from here and we had not taken a chance to see in the last 2.5 years!! Guess it took a visitor from the Wild Wild West for us to look at some next door wilderness!! So we went to the Featherdale Wildlife Park which was tucked inside a quiet suburb nearby-http://www.featherdale.com.au/ .

It was a small zoo which could be covered in a few hours. A very nice idea for a picnic (they allow food to be brought in from outside) on a good weather day. The weather was bearable though it turned out to be a bit nippy towards the later part of the afternoon.

Their primary attraction is the Koala bear. There were "heaps" of them mostly resting in their own cozy spots. It was interesting to see one Koala jump right into a zoo keeper's arms and she was carrying it around like a baby on the hip. There were few other native favourites such as Wombats, Wallabies, Dingos, Tasmanian Red Devil and of course the Roo (Kangaroo). We couldn't see a full grown roo though.

The surprising fact for me was the bird collection they had. Quite a variety for a zoo of that size. Some of the birds were quite "vocal" in showcasing their skills. Should've taken some video to record the melodies. Maybe next time. They had a collection of local and tropical birds. Very colourful indeed. It was a pity for the camera that the birds were in their fenced areas. Still managed to click a few virtually bypassing the fences. It was interesting to see the Peahen and the Peacock. Probably my first time seeing a Peahen? If the male (peacock) is supposed to be the prettier version....why do we correlate that with females in Tamil? It is quite ironical to call a girl "Mayil" - which basically means "not so pretty bird".

One another interesting feature was their "passport ticket". The entry pass had a small map and page with their local species. Next to each exhibit was a stamp pad and seal of that animal. Nandhitha found it "cool" to be stamping each animal. At the end we realized we missed out the Emu and went all the way to the other end of the park to get the stamp. Only to realize that one can stamp everything at one go just near the exit!!! 

Signing off for now...

Have a great week!!

C