February 23rd

Harlan and I live right near the Melbourne Zoo. Last weekend on a beautiful sunny day and only about 30C, we walked the ten minutes across the park to the zoo.

We saw the regular zoo animals, lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) but we really wanted to see the Australian native animals. Some you know, like kangaroos and emus. Some are a bit different!

Here are a few pictures that Harlan and I took. The animals were hot and resting in the shade so the picture taking opportunities were limited but I have made some links to other pictures. I also tried the video option on my camera for the first time!

These are red kangaroos resting in the shade. Just after Harlan took this picture…one of them got up and hopped for four jumps in front of me!














Echidna(ee kid na) Here is a photo and a video. They are very different looking animals. See how they waddle….


Wombats
I saw some wombats in an underground exhibit but not where I could take pictures. Four years ago when I was in Australia, I got to pet a wombat!



Platypus: I could watch the platypus swim for hours! I couldn’t take a picture of it because it was very fast! They look very different, don’t they? Click on these web sites to take a look.
http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au/2003/image/559/ilw/p-platypus_m.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Ornithorhynchidae-00.jpg


Here is a cute picture of a meerkat, not an Australian animal but he/she was so adorable that I wanted to show you.



On the coast of Australia, there are tiny penguins, called, that come in the shore every evening. We hope to go see them soon but here is a picture of one in the zoo.



I still haven’t seen a kangaroo or wallaby or koala in the wild. In a couple of weeks, we are traveling out of Melbourne, so I’m hoping that I’ll get to see some hopping around!

Here are some native birds.


My favorite part of the zoo was the butterfly house. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of butterflies flying free. They landed on you, the air was just full of butterflies. Really, really, neat. Here is the video I took, you can’t see a lot of details, just the movement of the butterflies. Imagine that you are standing with them swirling around.


I had a very nice day at the zoo with Harlan. He even bought me an ice cream!