New Zealand

Visited a nice little nature park before leaving town. They had a number of native birds, fish, and lizards. The lizard picture is of a young Tuatara, which is the only surviving species of a lizard family that lived during dinosaur years so all the little info blurbs like to refer to them as 'living dinosaurs'. They sort of look it, with this especially spiny ridge down their back. They apparently do everything very slowly, taking up to an hour to breathe, carrying eggs for ages, and living up to 200 years. Maybe they just haven't gotten around to dying out with the other dinosaurs yet lol.
The bird behind the fence is a Kea named Jenny. She was hatched in captivity as part of an effort to supplement the vanishing breed but she imprinted on humans much too quickly and couldn't be released into the wild. I was the only person in the park at the time and she ran right out to the fence to look at me. Her sign said she likes to hide from people and then run out and cry when they walk away. I can attest to the crying. It's not far off from a child crying and was pretty awful to listen to.
But the best part of the park was the Kiwis! They had a whole section set up explaining the causes of their endangerment and how the park is helping a national effort to bolster their numbers, etc. etc., and then you got to walk through this hallway they have set up on a reverse schedule since Kiwis are nocturnal where each whole side of the hall belonged to one Kiwi. There were only a couple of very dim blue and red lights so I thought I wouldn't be able to make out anything in all the little bushes and trees but, again, I was the only one in there so I just sat and listened for a bit and heard some scratching sounds before long. One of them was poking around the trunk of his tree and disappeared back into the brush pretty quickly but the other one, a 30 year old female, was digging for bugs right next to the glass of her enclosure. I crouched down and watched her from literally inches away as she prodded through the dirt in this little square patch. It was really great. She was probably the size of my head without her legs and beak, so bigger than I always imagined. At one point something startled her and she jumped straight up a good 6 inches. I almost laughed out loud. It was like the cats do out in the grass but with her spindly legs and fluffy beach ball body it looked like a cartoon.
All in all, a very good stop.Read more