We went to Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch twice in the past, but it has been a long time. We needed to go to Christchurch to pick my mom up at the airport, so Gayle and I decided to take our younger family (we have four older children and four younger, separated by four years) to the zoo. We spent about five hours walking around enjoying the animals. What makes Orana Park really stand out, though there aren’t very many animals compared to most zoos, is that we got to watch many of the animals being fed. We followed the schedule and saw every feeding for that day.
The meerkats were given eggs for this feeding.
Though the African porcupines normally sleep during the day, they came out eagerly for their dog biscuits!
Baby emus are cute!
When we arrived at the otter enclosure, they were standing up, begging in high-pitched squeaks and whistles for their fish!
All four children watching the ducks on one pond.
I’m not sure what type of birds these were, but they had a nest in the moat around the rhino enclosure.
Everyone’s favorite part of the zoo visit was feeding the giraffe! We were given olive branches, which we held up so the giraffe could strip off the leaves.
This is the baby giraffe–he’s about a year old.
They had fun feeding the turkey and chickens!
The lion feeding is always fun, too. This was the first day since Covid started that the truck was used to feed them. Only staff were on the truck for the trial run, but they plan to start selling tickets to the public again soon. Two of the three lions in the enclosure remembered this, but one didn’t seem to.
Tasmanian devil
We were very close to the rhinos while they ate their special treat: lucerne (alfalfa) hay.
I was talking to one of the zoo volunteers at the rhino enclosure, and happened to notice this nest right above his head. Not sure that was a good place to stand!
The children loved feeding the trout–and the ducks love the trout food! I tried to get a picture of the trout, but my battery ran out right there.
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