A fantastic aviary with rushing river and roaring waterfalls. I'm sure every bit as impressive as when I visited back in 1996. Takes you right inside the domain of the eagles. I might make it there again this year.
A fantastic aviary with rushing river and roaring waterfalls. I'm sure every bit as impressive as when I visited back in 1996. Takes you right inside the domain of the eagles. I might make it there again this year.
Hmmm--I don't recall any running water in this exhibit. Oregon Zoo's similar eagle aviary certainly features waterfalls etc, but I think Seattle just has a shallow pond. It's still a great exhibit; probably the best I've ever seen for eagles.
Great to be able to see raptors without mesh and without having their wings clipped. Have there been any incidents where the eagles got too close to the visitors?
There is a small stream that runs through the exhibit and into a small pond, and as far as I know there have never been any incidents with eagles attacking zoo visitors. A truly superb exhibit, and similar to ones at the Oregon Zoo and Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in that there is absolutely nothing separating the birds from humans. It was revealed on the zoo's website that there was the possibility of Steller's sea eagles being added to the aviary instead of bald eagles, but that was over a year ago now and so I'm not sure if that is still an option.
Hmmm--I don't recall any running water in this exhibit. Oregon Zoo's similar eagle aviary certainly features waterfalls etc, but I think Seattle just has a shallow pond. It's still a great exhibit; probably the best I've ever seen for eagles.
I could be mistaken, but when I visited the Woodland Park Zoo back in 1996, I was on a family vacation; destination British Columbia, Canada. My two sons were 3 and 9 at the time, and I have this exhibit on videotape. Now that's been over 13 years (August '96), and I haven't seen the tape in at least 3 or 4 years, since I moved to Santa Clarita. But I can almost swear, the "stream" seemed rather torrent at the time, as it is quite noisy on the tape as we are commenting on the eagles, which were dining on fish next to it. My wife and the boys were kidding around about being torn apart by the eagles, as they shredded the fish to pieces before eating them. I'll try to dig the VHS tape out of my garage and review it ASAP. Fortunately, we still have the rather outdated VHS machine, along with DVD of course, to play it on.
Was anyone out there visiting Woodland Park, and this exhibit in particular, around or prior to 1996? And in what year exactly did this magnificent aviary open?
The Woodland Park Zoo had a major rebirth in the early '90's, with the Tropical Rainforest opening in 1992, Northern Trail in 1994, and Tropical Asia in 1995...all huge exhibit complexes. This bald eagle aviary thus opened in 1994, and I always remember it with a picturesque stream running through the middle. Whether or not the water was a "torrent" is up for debate.
