Monday 14 November 2011

Taronga Zoo's new tiger cubs

Being Family Fun day on Sunday, we decided to make a trip to the zoo and see the new tiger cubs, who are now 10 weeks old.  There are 3 of them, 2 males and one female.  We left really early in the morning to make sure we were on the 9:15am ferry and there were quite a few people there already.  I guess they all had the same idea we had.  And also, we wanted to avoid the hot weather, but the forecast did say a maximum of 24-26, with minimal chance of rain.

The tiger exhibit didn't open till 10am and there were signs saying that the cubs would be out from 10am till 1pm so they wouldn't get too tired.  So we didn't wander over that early.  We made our way there about 1015am.

But there was a HUGE queue!  Which I guess, was to be expected, since they were new.  And they were funnelling people through 30 at a time and letting them look for about 3-4 minutes, which was great - plenty of time and not too crowded so the kids and us could get some good views and pics if needed.  But the wait was horrible.  Lining up with toddlers for almost half an hour is not my idea of fun.

The zoo has gone some major renovations and the front entrance has been revamped and looks fantastic.

One of the startling things that occurred was at lunch, when I gave Julian a potato chip to eat, and he was holding it and an ibis came along and pecked it out of his hand!  He was startled, but didn't cry but he didn't want to eat any more chips after that.  Damn pesky ibises.  That was INSIDE the food hall too!

The baby elephants have grown up so much.  And the Free Flight Bird Show has changed a little as well, with black cockatoos including a Glossy Black (I think) being displayed as part of the show.  This time we had an Australian Hobby doing some fast dives which was new, and also the usual barking owl, barn owl, Andean condor (though I always like that one), Brolga and Galah.  Julian was asleep for the whole thing but Erika was awake.

The seal at the exit was cute as well.  Sitting there at the bottom of the tank checking us out.

The ferry back was on a catamaran instead of a ferry, which was nice!  Sat up top for a little bit, but the sun got to me after a while and I headed back down below with everyone else.  Weather was great though, and all in all it was a nice day out.

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