A Trip to Birdland

I love taking pictures of animals, wild or domesticated - sometimes good results are too hard to achieve because you don't know the local conditions wherever you might be visiting - or it's the wrong time of day, month or year for the best shots. To this end I also like checking out the local wildlife parks - which feature a mostly captive audience. On a recent trip down the south coast (as far as Broulee), we decided to give Birdland a go. 

This 7 hectare wildlife park is located on the shoreline between Bateman's Bay and Batehaven. Tripadvisor reviews that I read were mostly negative - the place was 'run down', 'very wet and muddy paths' between exhibits, etc. Interestingly on Google maps the park is barely visible as it's almost entirely covered by trees. Not a bad thing if you are sheltering hundreds of wild animals and birds (or intend to wander about in the heat of the day). It's $26 for an adult entry ticket so we thought we'd give it a go.
We arrived at 10:30 and were probably only the third or fourth visitors on that day - and the only ones not dragging two-year old kids around in a pram. One review I read complained that there were 'too many peacocks and not enough other animals'. Not sure what planet they were from. Yes, there were a lot of peacocks in the park - we counted more than 20 peacocks, but only a couple of females ('peahens') but we still appreciated their amazing plumage and raucous calls, plus they provided some great photo opportunities. Who doesn't like peacocks?

Right from the entrance gates, the park emanates a feeling of dishevelment - it really looks like the garden of an eccentric old family where all the plants and flower borders are heavily overgrown, with leaf-strewn paths in dire need of sweeping or raking. And the park location map, well, there wasn't one that we saw - just a few bedraggled signposts helpfully pointing in various directions - to the ostriches (the 'Eagles' were crossed out with tape - I wonder what happened there?), to the 'the toilets' (a block that looked as if it had recently been hit by a Turkish Bayraktar drone) plus multiple signs leading us to a wonder of other park residents.

I think these are Green Ring-necked Parakeets. One shortcoming in this park was that not all the birds were labelled clearly - and some enclosures boasted several labels for birds that were clearly not resident at the time we visited. Interestingly Mogo Zoo, 25kms further south, used to have a lot of birds on show, but now has almost none, so I wondered if they ended up in Birdland.

Superficially the park does look as if it's neglected - although to be fair, the exhibited species all looked very well cared for. In fact, the kangaroo, wallaby and ostrich paddocks are huge - much larger than most paddocks in other wildlife parks I've visited. The whole experience is one of wandering through an unkempt overgrown garden populated with a dazzling array of birds, mammals, reptiles and more. I'd thoroughly recommend a visit.

I think this is a Yellow Ringneck Parrakeet.

 

Kookaburra and pigeon - free visitors to the park

A rather hairy looking Swamp Wallaby highlighted in the bright sunshine

Another wallaby with what appear to be slightly buck teeth

 

This is a Lady Amherst Pheasant - native of S.W. China and Northern Myanmar - so named as she (Lady Amherst) was the first person to ship one of these strikingly-plumed birds to the UK. She bred them on her estate in Bedfordshire and, with typical English upper crust arrogance, used them for hunting. I read that there are frequent sightings of wild Amherst pheasants - escapees that avoided getting shot and have bred in the wild - but they are not regarded as common by any means. 

Close up of a Barbary Dove - an introduced species

Two very different views of a Peacock - with a 24mm lens and a 600mm lens, at right

Two great views of the cute Frogmouth, a nocturnal bird with exceptional camouflage plumage.

A pair of stoic-looking Bush Stone-Curlews or Thick Knee

Not all the birds on show appeared calm - this magnificent Silver Pheasant just paced back and forth in its enclosure - obviously stressed and not happy with its life in sunny Batehaven. (Natalie had more patience than I did getting this good profile shot of the bird).

Never seen one of these raptors in captivity before - the Australian Kestrel or Nankeen Kestrel - is well know for its exceptional eyesight and its ability to hover in one spot while hunting for small prey - then dropping like a stone to grab whatever unfortunate critter it had its eyes on. 

The park has a pair of female Ostriches who are very curious when visitors approach - they seemed to be quite tame 

A couple more parrot shots - a pair of green parakeets (I think), at left, and a Corella at right. Snapping birds in cages is hard because of the mesh cage. The only way to get rid of the tell-tale mesh is to go close to the fence then focus on a bird that's not too close to the mesh in front or behind it. In the left-hand example the cage is almost invisible while the Corella shot picks up the wire netting easily. Shooting with a wide open aperture (ie. f4) helps defocus any distracting backgrounds.

Just hangin' around . As you can see in this shot, these wallabies have a huge enclosure - I had to walk about a hundred metres into their paddock to get this shot with a 600mm lens. And a beach view as well!