Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

One weary, footsore traveller here tonight. Barb and I took ourselves off to Lowry Park Zoo today, here in Tampa.

It's very cool, a lovely zoo that has the animals in enclosures as close to natural as they would be in the wild. Most of them are part of breeding programmes for endangered species, or injured animals that could not be rehabilitated. And they're all very happy and content looking. Quite like Australia Zoo, only not on such a huge scale.

Well you know me. Beeline for the birds, if you know me you know I love birds. And first off I found some rainbow lorikeets that you could feed. Now you'd think, being an Australian living on the Eastern coast, I'd get thoroughly sick of rainbow lorikeets right? Wrong! Even if they do wake me up at 4am in the morning, I still love them. See?


That's my hand there.


Me and Barb, with our lorikeet friends


And this guy was some other kind of lorikeet that I didn't recognise. Yes, that's my hand again.

Another favourite were the flamingoes. I didn't realise that the colour in them was so vibrant:



There were all kinds of other animals to experience.

From big babies:



To little babies:



From active, sociable ones:


These guys ate out of our hands and slapped the water to soak us, and liked to be tickled.

To more retiring types:



From those that kept their distance and just observed:



To those that got a little closer and more interactive:


(Look, it's got eyelashes like Floss!)

And then there were they shy type, that didn't much care for the intrusion of visitors and their cameras:





To those of a little more exhibitionist nature:



All in all it was a great day. And to top it off, if I wasn't quite so sure how far I was from home, I found this to remind me.


(For those who don't know, it says Indooroopilly, a suburb of Brisbane, and is about 15 minutes from my house)