Willowbank Wildlife Reserve*****
We bought our tickets from bookme.co.nz for $18 (normal price $25), normally they offer half price discount, but since we bought it for the next day, the cheapest available price is that. It was really nice spending our morning in this wildlife reserve, where they guarantee a kiwi bird viewing!
Pukeko Bird
The are quite a list of native animals, like kea (mountain parrot), takahe (rare flightless bird), kaka, kiwi bird, and tuatara. But also have interesting animals like lemur with the baby twins and an monkey island. Of course the list of animals in Willowbank is no way compared to the Orana wildlife park, but the kiwi experience is really cool.
Kiwi bird, the best shot we can get in this dark enclosure, this flightless bird is so shy..
The kiwi bird enclosures are set in a dark environment like forest, so we actually saw about four kiwi birds (after adapting our eyes to the darkness) and two of them were using their long beak, poking into the earth to look for food.
Kiwi belongs to the Rattie family of birds which include the emu (Australia), ostrich, cassowary and the extinct moa. They have lived in NZ for around 30million years and generally are nocturnal. Live in underground burrows and usually has a partner for life. It is the only bird in the world to have nostrils at the end of the bill and have very keen sense of smell. Uses its beak to probe and smell prey underground, has large ear openings with excellent hearing. It is the second to largest egg per body weight of any bird species in which the egg can be up to 25% of female kiwi's body weight (about 6 hens eggs!).
200million years ago New Zealand is part of a supercontinent that is known as Gondwanaland. 80 million years ago, NZ started to break away. Gondwanaland split into pieces that became Africa, India, South America, Papua New Guinea, Antartica, Australia and NZ. It took 30 million years for NZ to become completely separated.
Mandarin Ducks
Mischievous Lemurs
Beauty and the
Beast
Fatty rabbit, looks like a cat...
Eels... Ewe....
White faced Heron
Christchurch Botanic Garden
FACTS: Kiwi Legend, Sir Edmund Hillary climbed everest on 29 May 1953, led Ross Sea Party of Fuchs Trans Antartic Expedition 1957-1958.
We spend about three hours at this museum which is not enough! So much to see but the free parking at Botanic Garden (the only free parking around Canterbury museum & I-site) is only up to three hours. So we just have to miss other displays on Asian arts, dinasours and animals... Aaarghh....
Summit road sunset
A short drive from Christchurch city centre leads to this amazing sunset viewing location..
View of Lyttelton Harbour
Christchurch night view
Yummy Korean dinner, we take away some frozen kimchi dumpling for tomorrow =D
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