Photos from 2002 October 11
Today was laundry day, so the only thing I ended up doing was going to the Featherdale Wildlife Sanctuary, which turned out to be pretty cool. I only had two hours here, and I could have easily spent another two. It was really an ingeneous use of limited space, yet without cramping the animals. So, all the images you'll see from today, like most of the ones from yesterday, will be of animals. Here's another Lorakeet, just close up.	This is a Tawny Frogmouth. Kind of like an owl. I saw one at the zoo yesterday, but the building was too dark to take a photo. The one yesterday had just >caught< a mouse. The mouse was already dead, placed there by a keeper, but that didn't stop the bird from whacking the corpse against a tree branch to make sure it was dead. This one, today, wasn't anywhere near as dramatic. In fact, it was asleep.	A cockatoo.	A sleeping wombat.
This place had a lot of kangaroos and wallabies running around free. Others were inside (reasonably large) enclosures. I have no idea why some were outside and some were in. Although, of course, in a sense, they were *all* in, and we humans were in with them, as the whole park was enclosed. Anyway, the cool part was that even the >open< areas had indicated zones that the roos and wallabies could easily get into but people would have to climb a fence. So if they didn't want to be pestered by people, they had a sanctuary to go to.	This little wallaby let me pet him. So I really was inches away when I took this shot. No zoom necessary.	He really was amazingly cute.	The Cassowaries were, on the other hand, not particularly cute. Note the spur on the inside toe. Whew.
A closeup of the cassowary head.	I would say I was within three feet of this guy, but with a fence between us. I could still take a photo over the fence, but we were well-separated.	A couple more pelicans.	They had some Kookooburras out in the open, too.
They had a whole bunch of koalas, but most of them were asleep.	Baby emus!!!	Here you can see what I mean about the roos being out in the open area.	THese birds are like pidgeons in Sydney, and for some reason I find their crests really funny.
Okay, this picture is Australia in a nutshell. A roo, a wallaby, an emu, and a wombat in the same picture! Can you believe it? :-)	Penguins!	Some flying foxes. You can really tell why they call them that, eh?	Boo!
They really were amazing creatures. It was fascinating to watch them walk along the underside of the cage roof. The feet had full grasping capability, but their hands had been so modified to make the wings that all they had was one >fingernail< that poked out from the wing that they could use as a hook to aid movement. So they would hook, dangle while they moved their feet, and then rehook.	They had three Tasmanian Devils, and I *finally* got some good photos of one. The one at the Sydney zoo was hiding in a log, and I couldn't get a good photo. The next few pictures are all different views of the Tasmanian Devils.	They ran around a lot, and even got into sreaming matches with each other. I imagine they can't have been real threats, or the people wouldn't have put them in the same enclosure.	They looked *kindof* doglike, but they didn't move like dogs at all.
You can see the paws aren't doglike at all.	Last Devil shot.	An albino wallaby.	A very impressively powerful-looking eagle.
A very silly looking something or other. I should have a short recording of its ever-repeating cry around here somewhere. Try Annoy.WAV if you want to hear it.	I don't remember what this was, but it was a very cute little baby whatsit.	Here's mama whatsit.	Aha! *Finally* I got to see some Echidnas! The Echidna at the Billabong Sanctuary (Sept 26) had died a few weeks before, and the ones at the Sydney Zoo were nowhere to be seen, but these two were out and about. This is the feeding station set up for them, with pipes for them to stick their snouts into.
I thought they were just adorable.	So I took lots of pictures. (And deleted about half of them)	When they came out of their tree-trunk home, they tended to move around a lot, so it was hard to get a good picture of them. My best attempts still came out blurry from the motion.	They walked with a lumbering, shuffling gait that I have to say I think the Disney animators got spot-on in The Rescuers Down Under.
Okay, one last shot before we move on. I watched these guys for at least a half-hour.	I'd never seen an albino peacock before.	Here's a mama roo with a baby joey in her pouch.	These two roos were... well, I don't know if they were challenging each other or what, but it was like watching that acting exercise where you try to mirror the other person. These two stayed right across from each other and bounded back and forth along the fence. At this point, I realized the park was closing, so I had to tear myself away and find the exit (not easy -- the place was a real maze).
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