Cattle Egret, walk through aviary at Adelaide Zoo
Cattle Egret in walk through aviary at Adelaide Zoo
I love visiting the walk-through aviaries at Adelaide Zoo. It enables me to get close up photos of many species I have trouble approaching closely enough for good photographic studies, like the one above. When one is only a few metres from a bird of this size (48-53cm high) and puts the zoom on the lens into action, amazing shots can result. The fine details of plumage come to life and the colours can be impressive. Please note that the photos on this post have not been altered in any way from the originals.
Cattle Egrets are widespread throughout northern and eastern Australia and parts of SW Western Australia. They are widespread in my part of South Australia but my experience of them is that they are not present in huge numbers here. They take on the beautiful orange plumage during breeding. I love the plumes on the back of the bird shown in the photo below (click to enlarge).
Cattle Egret in walk through aviary at Adelaide Zoo
Cattle Egret in walk through aviary at Adelaide Zoo
Cattle Egret in walk through aviary at Adelaide Zoo
Cattle Egret in walk through aviary at Adelaide Zoo
Bush Stone-curlew
Bush Stone-curlew, Adelaide Zoo
The Bush Stone-curlew is a species I have yet to see in its natural environment. They are not all that common here in South Australia, so I was pleased to see and photograph this bird recently in the Pelican enclosure at Adelaide Zoo. The white thing pointing at it in the top left hand corner of the photo is actually the beak of a pelican.
Bush Stone-curlews are found in the western half of Western Australia, across northern Australia and in eastern and south eastern Australia. In some parts of their former range they are now uncommon to rare in areas settled for farming or urban sprawl except in Brisbane suburbs where they seem to thrive.
Emu at Adelaide Zoo
Emu and Tammar Wallaby, Adelaide Zoo
Adelaide Zoo in South Australia is one of my favourite zoos, and it is also my home zoo, being less than an hour’s drive from my home. I am a life member of Zoos SA, mainly because of my love of birds and animals but also because of the zoo’s excellent conservation programmes.
Adelaide Zoo boasts an excellent collection of Australian bird species as well as a few foreign birds. There are several walk through aviaries which I always visit because they provide an excellent opportunity for bird photography. There are numerous other aviaries too, but shooting through the wire of each cage can be challenging. More about that in future articles here.
I didn’t have any such problems taking photos of the Emus in their enclosure. They roam around a large enclosure with only a low fence surrounding it. This provides excellent opportunities for good photos. They also share the enclosure with some Tammar Wallabies. In the last photo you can see a wallaby with a joey poking his head out of the pouch to pose for me.
Further reading:
- Giant Pandas at Adelaide Zoo
- Birds of Adelaide Zoo
- Eclectus Parrots, Adelaide Zoo
- Emus at Monarto Zoo
Emu and Tammar Wallaby, Adelaide Zoo
Tammar Wallaby, Adelaide Zoo
Birds in the Adelaide Zoo
Emu, Adelaide Zoo
I really enjoy visiting zoos. I love seeing the many animals on display but I especially like visiting zoos because of the photographic opportunities they present.
My home zoo is Adelaide Zoo here in South Australia. It’s about an hour’s drive from my home and I am a life member. I don’t particularly like animals being caged up and not free, but I became a member supporting Zoos SA because of their excellent conservation programmes. They have wonderful breeding programmes and have been very successful in breeding several endangered species and then releasing those animals back into their natural habitats.
One of the strengths of the Adelaide Zoo is their strong bird collection. All the birds are kept in aviaries which mimic their preferred habitats. Several of the aviaries are open to the public to walk through, and these provide excellent photo opportunities. I’ll be sharing some of these photos in the coming days.
Further reading:
- Birds of the Adelaide Zoo
- Straw-necked Ibis, Adelaide Zoo
- Little Penguins at Adelaide Zoo
- Giant Pandas at the Adelaide Zoo
Emu eggs, Adelaide Zoo
Yellow-footed Rock-wallaby, Adelaide Zoo
Red Kangaroo, Adelaide Zoo
100,000 visitors – well, almost
Male Flame Robin, Mt. Macedon, Victoria
This blog about my sighting of Australian birds has been going for just over five years now. During that time I have published nearly 1200 articles about our beautiful birds. Many of these articles have one and often several photos of birds I have been blessed to get focussed in my camera lens.
Over the years a community of people who appreciate birds has grown on this site, and we are approaching 4000 comments and questions, a significant milestone which will happen any day now. (I’ll keep an eye on the statistics and let everyone know. Sorry – no prize for making the 4000th comment.) I’d like to thank all of you who come here regularly, and especially those of you who leave comments. You are appreciated.
You may have noticed a logo on the sidebar from the Fat Birder “Birding Top 1000” ranking. This site ranks the top birding sites from around the world. Over the last year my site has consistently been in the top 50 sites, sometimes as high as about #24. This amazes me. The ranking is based on traffic to my site, so plenty of people must be visiting on a regular basis.
I use two other programmes which analyse the traffic coming to my site. On one of these I had just over 250,000 visitors last year, but this site can be rather misleading. Google Analytics is a far more reliable indicator I believe, and last year Trevor’s Birding had almost 100,000 visitors – actually, it was just 600 short of that figure.
Darn.
Never mind, figures so far in 2011 indicate that visitor numbers continue to grow. I am planning to continue posting new articles here at least every two or three days – more if I have the time – for the foreseeable future, so stay tuned.
And don’t forget to leave a comment or two. I appreciate your efforts.
Good birding.