San Diego (October 17-24, 2006)

Our next day was spent at the Wild Animal Park, north of San Diego, just east of Escondido.

You can pay $2 to feed 'browse' to the giraffes, but it made more sense to me to just watch them eat what the zoo staff provided.

We were quite impressed with the park, which was a cross between Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom, and the Western Plains Zoo in New South Wales.

A rather inelegant pose.....

Lemurs catching the morning sun.

Perhaps the female was impressed too!

The male condor's 6 foot plus wingspan was impressive.

I felt awkward standing there with a 6-foot bird staring at me.....

However, the view of his front was less so, almost comical.....

Khosi was born on September 11.

This baby African elephant is only a month old, and is called Khosi. Here she is with her 16-year-old, first-time mother Umngani.

Other Indian elephants were spraying dirt on their backs to keep insects away.

Indian elephants are smaller than their African cousins. They are easily distinguished by the smaller size of their ears.

The birds were very entertaining to watch in the morning before the weather warmed up.

The central lagoon was home to a variety of birdlife:

The male pelican clamped his beak down on the female's neck, then he.....

herons, pelicans, cormorants.....

Shoebill storks.

..... storks, ducks.....

The cormorants open their beaks because they are hot. Because they don't sweat, they pant to cooling their bodies.

..... cormorants, ducks .....

Flamingos feed on small crustaceans, algae and unicellular organisms, which they filter from the water with their unique sieve-like beaks.

..... flamingoes, ducks .....

These are Ausralian geese, but I had never seen them before

..... geese and even more ducks!

The geese and ducks were very friendly as they were accustomed to being fed by park visitors.

What's Sheryll up to now?