Birdland Animal Park

Birdland is an animal park in Batehaven, the town just to the south of Batemans Bay where John's school is. It is a nice small park, locally owned and run, with just animals of Australia. We went on Sunday, 16 March. It is a lot like the Mogo Zoo in that we were able to wander around where we wanted, at our own pace, and go back to our favourite displays. We saw koalas, but as it was in the afternoon, they were sleeping. We are going to go later on in the year in the morning when they have a keeper bring the koalas out and we will be able to hold them, but that is for another blog!














There were lots of birds, but we get a lot of them in our own back yard, so that wasn't the most exciting thing. The best thing was a kangaroo enclosure that we could go right into, and be with the kangaroos. We went back twice, and spent the best part of an hour just enjoying their company. These are very tame creature, used to being fed (they sell little bags of animal food at the entry to the park), so they came right up to us and we were able to pet them. One had a large joey in her pouch, complete with the legs and tail sticking out, and one mother had a tiny joey in her pouch that would occasionally stick it's head out - barely covered in fur and still slightly pink - very cute. Natalie was able to pat the mother and joey at the same time - what an experience!














We also saw other varieties of kangaroos, including the large red kangaroo from northern Australia, wallabies, and tiny kangaroos. There were emus and ostriches, wombats, echidnas, goannas, lizards, etc. At the end of our visit was a demonstration by one of the keepers of two diamond pythons and a baby wombat. She brought the pythons out first, a male and a female, to a large grassy show area, and told us about them and we were allowed to hold them. She onlylet adults hold the male, so John and I took our chances and held the big snake - I had never held a snake before, but it was amazing, the snake was so strong, I could feel how it was twisting around. Really neat experience. The girls declined the offer. The baby wombat was brought out next, a 14 month old whose mother had been killed by a car. The park takes in these orphans and rears them until they are old enough to go back to the wild. I held the wombat too, just like a big baby!



http://www.birdlandanimalpark.com.au/