I just spent a wonderful day at an excellent Australian zoo. It was a warm day in the Melbourne summer, around 85F. We arrived around 11:15, and we didn’t want to miss the Birds or prey and parrot presentation at noon, so we walked past the wetlands. We knew we had some time so we entered the Lyrebird Aviary. Just inside the gate the Lyrebird had created a dance floor. He was putting on a royal show. I heard a kookaburra – only to realize it was the Lyrebird. Then it went rat-tat-tat. He held his tail feathers above his head. I had my phone doing a video as we entered the gate:

We stayed for his entire dance, and still got to the Spirits of the Sky show on time. The show started with parrots, then a Black-breasted Buzzard showed off his innate tool using ability by breaking open an egg with a stone. Some parrots showed off their colors and a sulphur-crested cockatoo flew overhead. The zookeeper explained that their calls were some of the loudest bird sounds in the world, almost equal to a jet engine. The parrots were taken off stage and the star of the show a wedge tailed eagle flew closely over our heads.

We then walked through the Land of Parrots and followed the map back down past the kangaroos to hear a talk on Echidnas. I was happy to see some that were accustomed to humans and not just rolled up in a ball like I’d seen them in the wild. They eat ants but the zoo feeds them a special substitute because they can’t supply that many ants.

The koala forest included a mother who was still nursing her twelve month old baby who was almost as big as she was:

We wanted to hear the talk on the Tasmanian Devil especially since we’d seen a movie last week on how they are facing possible extinction from a viral cancer. At the koala forest a zoo volunteer told us about the new tree kangaroo joey that was just starting to come out from his mother’s pouch. I hadn’t even known there was a tree kangaroo. This one is involved in a special conservation effort.

I was amazing to watch this baby taking his first drink.

Then we walked back to find the Tasmanian Devil. At first we didn’t see anything. The young ones in the exhibit were in hiding during the day. The zookeeper brought us to another area where she introduced us to a three year old boy.

She threw him a quail and he chopped it down quickly:

They had 50 healthy Tasmanian devils that were not on exhibit to help keep the species healthy .

These are a few highlights of my visit. We also saw reptiles, platypus, frogs, wombats, kangaroos, wallabies, emus. It was one of the best Australian zoos I’d ever visited.