A day with wildlife...

July 5
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
the Lord God made them all-
A day at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and Currumbin Beach

Spent late morning playing with Boh with Norz & Jeeta, then we all piled into the car for a ride to drop me at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.  What a treat I was in for!  Even if you simply like to tramp in the bush like I do, it was a great place to be.  It is a huge track of jungly land with wonderful pathways up and down.  Also, there were wonderful displays of small and large animals with plenty of information available about them: birds, snakes (Enormous cobras!), lizards, new nocturnal mammals like potoroos, wallabies, tree kangaroos, etc. There were also events, like the Croc. Show, kangaroo feeding, aboriginal dancing and the amazing Lorikeet feeding.  If I had had time I would have also done the Green Challenge, which is an extensive high ropes course.  It was fun to watch anyway!  One woman put her ten-yearold up there at noon and hadn't been able to get him to come down out of the trees by 3! I fed wallabies and saw many birds I never saw before.  The highlight, though, had to be the Lorikeet feeding.  People gather in the central area that has little playground-sized Ferris Wheels and trays all along the fence.  The Lorikeets see the activity and start to gather in great numbers in the trees around there. As they do, they flash red and green as they fly.  They are vividly colored.  Next, the naturalists come around and fill your trays with a nectar-like liquid (water, honey and a powder supplement).  If the Hitchcock film The Birds scared you, you might not want to participate because the Lorikeets start to go crazy, diving in to land on all the trays and the trays are being held by the audience.  We were told to hold them high.  Some trays had up to 7 or 8 birds on them.  There were hundreds of birds hopping onto the trays & people's heads, too!  They would open their beaks and just start lapping the liquid up rapidly.  Every so often they all hop around and reconfigure; sometimes some sort of alert went through the flock and they all leaped into the air and flew at once up around the stand of trees, creating a great wind with their wings!  They would swoop back down and do the whole thing again!  I had many birds stop to see me.  The first one shocked me so that I yelled and dropped my tray!  Twice I had one sitting on my head, which caused a shiver down my back.  I was not keen on too many on my head.  I saw one poop on one gal's head.  Guessing she will shampoo tonight!

After 4-5 hours,  I just walked a couple of blocks to the ocean beach and walked there for a while.  I have named it Squeaky Sand Beach.  Such soft, squeaky sand!  Boon says it is like walking on talcum powder. AT sunset I head to a cafe for tea while I wait for Boon to come pick me up...  And of course another delicious meal  based on Jeeta's & Boon's Malaysian & Chinese background!