This entry was posted on 5/22/2007 5:45 AM and is filed under Australia.
We had a very fun day with our friends Monica, Angela
and Brucie, all relatives of our good Aussie friend Tara Rizzi from
Santa Barbara (her mother, sister and sister's husband). We had
met her family when they came to Santa Barbara for Tara's wedding last
year, so this was a sweet reunion of all of us.
They picked us
up and drove us out to Healesville, about an hour away, for lunch and a
stroll through the animal sanctuary. We saw many exotic animals
that we've never seen before. It was a terrific day.
Here are Monica, Angela, Brucie and Evelyn.
They had a really cool Birds of Prey show where they brought out these huge raptors and let them freely fly.
They
had a problem when two truly free eagles flew over us proclaiming their
domain over the territory we were in. The trainers were fearful
their trained birds would get harmed, so the show was unfortunately cut
short.
Here is one of the trained birds flying over us.
This
bird - a Buzzard - was amazing because she would pick up a rock and
intentionally drop it on the ostrich egg to break it. She
repeated this act over and over until she had cracked the egg and could
get at the contents inside. This is not learned behavior, but
completely instinctual. There is only one other bird in the world
that uses rocks as a tool like this, a turkey vulture in Africa.
Yes,
we finally saw someone prove that it was possible to throw a boomerang
(several times) and have it come back to you. We didn't realize
that it goes in a huge circle as it comes back. Very cool. check it out.
6/4/2007 2:41 AM
Ray wrote:
Wot, no platypus at Healesville??? The green egg is an emu's egg. The turkey vulture does the same trick with ostrich eggs(which are white) in Egypt/Africa! (shades of Gondwanaland!) Looking forward to catching up at the Sydney Film Festival-love Ray&Bill Reply to this
