Saturday 1 September 2012

Breakfast with the birds

'The Habitat' in Port Douglas is famous for "Breakfast with the Birds" and "Lunch with the Lorikeets" so we decided to try the former and arrived at 8am hungry in anticipation if an all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast! There was delicious fruit, cooked bacon, sausages, eggs & beans, croissants and other pastries (my personal favourite!), cereal (why fill up on this?!), juices and tea & coffee...And the only limiting factors were how much you could fit in your stomach, and how much the birds stole from you should you leave your filled plate on the table to get another cup of coffee!

Well, we packed away as much as we could and then went round the rest of the habitats -grassland, wetlands and rainforest. There were some interesting and informative feeding tours, and we were lucky enough to be there on the one day a week that they feed the crocodiles. It's quite impressive when 4.2 metres of crocodile launches itself in the air to grab a dangling chicken!
We also stroked a snake, a baby crocodile and feed the kangaroos, but there were a lot less people around than at the other place we visited from Sydney. Also the animals all had the freedom to roam, only the quoll was in a cage and it was a big one. The staff were friendlier and gave more interesting talks and at this place the koalas were only allowed to 'work' for 30 mins every 3 weeks. Becky cuddled a koala...or rather it clung to her shoulders with its sharp claws as if she was a tree, but she still managed to smile for the camera! I had some close encounters with kangaroos/wallabies which were really lovely...I tempted them over for food and they let me stroke them in return :-) It was a bit of a mission stopping the magpie geese from pecking the food out of my hands and there were some pretty greedy moorhens too running aggressively towards me, but I managed to distract them with scattered food while the kangaroos ate out of my hands.

I forgot to take a picture for you, sorry, but I must tell you one last thing- I saw a sea eagle today, flying over the sea (funnily enough!) while Becky was using my bodyboard. An impressive sight even without binoculars because it was close enough to see its white head and dark wing tips with the naked eye. Brilliant!

1 comment:

  1. We saw one of those when we were up in Scotland earlier this year. However it was more like a speck of black in the sky - well two specks actually because they were a breeding pair. We couldn't make out any of the markings. However, we were assured by the man on the boat tour that sea-eagles is what they were. You see you don't need to go all the way to Australia to see those. Although I'll give you Koalas, Wallabies, Kangaroos and any other marsupial you want to chuck into the mix. Glad you're still having a great time. Looking forward to having you home soon though.

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