Hello!
I will be visiting Australia for the first time in a couple months time now, and Featherdale is one of the parks at the top of my list to visit given their immense bird collection. While I'm generally content with letting what is and is not visible at this park surprise me when I visit (I understand that the ZTL list isn't necessarily complete or accurate), there is one species I'm particularly curious about. Does anyone know whether the Plains-Wanderer are on-show or off-exhibit? The ZTL entry for them states that someone saw them back in April of this year, but I have a friend who visited over the summer and stated that he didn't remember seeing them.
My only other big question for this zoo is roughly how long I should expect a visit to be given most of these species I will have never seen before? Due to some time constraints, I'm having to combine a few collections into one day, but I'm not sure if I'm being too ambitious. Having an idea of roughly how long this park takes to visit might help me with that. It looks to have a pretty small footprint, but is jammed with tons of awesome species.
As many on ZC may know, I'm someone who's interested in pretty much any and all wildlife, so if anyone has any advice on the best methods to see certain species or tips on particularly hard to see animals at the zoo, I'm all ears!
Thank you in advance!
~Thylo
I was just there today (first visit). The map really is awful - the one they give you is very small and the labelling on it is barely legible. There is no proper lay-out to the park, it is basically a maze of aviaries. I didn't use the map at all, I just took every path to make sure of seeing everything. It involves a lot of backtracking between the aviaries but there's no other way.
I was there for four hours, so I'd imagine you would be about the same or longer because a lot more of the species will be new for you. I found photographing any of the birds very difficult with the mesh and sun.
I'll do a current species list when I have some time, but briefly:
1) Your chance of seeing Plains Wanderer from afar is zero - even if they weren't nocturnal the aviaries have baffles around the bottom so the ground area can't be seen even with binoculars.
2) Be aware that many aviaries can be viewed from two or three sides, and often there is different ID signage on different sides so you might potentially miss species by only looking for the ones you can see on the signs on one side of an aviary.
3) There are quite a few unsigned birds in the mixed aviaries, however those species are usually also in other aviaries as well, so you should see them regardless.
4) Having said both 2 and 3 - if you spend time checking each aviary properly (a lot of them are well-planted) you will see almost everything. There were very few species I couldn't find.
5) Also, a lot of the species you'd be most interested in are in multiple aviaries so you'll get several chances at them. Pheasant Coucal, Chestnut Rail, Regent Bowerbird, Chiming Wedgebill, Crested Bellbird, Noisy Pitta, etc are all in two to four aviaries each. Even the owls (except Boobook) are in at least two each. "Important" species currently only in one aviary include Superb Lyrebird, Malleefowl, Channel-billed Cuckoo, Spotted Bowerbird, Purple-crowned Fairy Wren, Variegated Fairy Wren, Crimson Chat, White-naped Honeyeater, Grey-crowned Babbler, and Australian Bustard.
