Zoo

Columbus Zoo

September 21, 2025 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

While we were in Ohio, we took a day to go to the Columbus Zoo. My brother, who lives in Ohio, and his family have a year pass, so we went together. There are no elephants in New Zealand, so the children badly wanted to see one.

While we waited for my brother’s family to arrive, we took a few pictures. They were setting up for the Lantern Festival, so there were cloth sculptures like this all over the zoo (picture below of one of them).

Our first stop was the sea lion exhibit–and the first thing we saw there was this diver cleaning the cage!

The sea lions swim around, over and under a glass tunnel that we walked through. We enjoyed watching them.

There was a glass underwater viewing area for the polar bears, too.

Reindeer

Wolverine

Hyenas

Finally, the elephants! This one was playing with a stick, putting it in her mouth and crunching it. A young one was throwing sand all over itself. The big male was in an enclosure by itself, and we watched it eating hay from a large net bag, very carefully pulling some out and putting it into its mouth.

When we walked up to the flamingoes, the entire flock raced over to us, honking loudly. I had never imagined that they sound so much like geese!

Miss Joy had ben asking if we would see an alligator. She was enthralled, and spent several minutes studying it.

The children’s aunt bought tickets for them to ride the carousel.

We enjoyed watching the gorillas eat their meal. The baby was really cute!

There was a baby orangutan, too.

I had never seen a koala before!

Wellington Zoo

February 21, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After we crossed Cook Strait on the ferry, we picked Elijah up at the airport. He had spent the week at a youth camp in Dunedin. After that, we went to the zoo.

Gayle treated the children to ice creams and ice blocks. While Miss Joy ate hers, she climbed through a lizard’s throat! It was a slide.

There were a lot of sculptures scattered through the zoo. She loved sitting on them!

Otters

An agouti. The next picture shows an exhibit designed to illustrate the agouti’s habit of hoarding stashes of food!

The red panda was perched directly above our path on a high branch.

The sun bear was fed while we were there. We were amused at the way it used its foot as a table!

Miss Joy’s favorite spot was the chimpanzee enclosure. She and her daddy stayed there for a long time. She was enthralled with the baby, who was climbing around and checking everything out.

I had never seen a capybara before! We have a book about one, titled Capyboppy, so it was delightful to actually see one–although it did nothing except sleep.

The ring-tailed lemurs were fun to watch! When they walk through tall grass, all you can see is the waving tails, which stand nearly straight up.

The squirrel monkeys were a lot of fun to watch, too. We found a bench beside them, and stayed there for awhile. They were quite active.

I really liked the Wellington Zoo. It is small, but laid out in such a way that it feels quite spacious. The enclosures are fairly natural, and the animals seemed reasonably happy.

Orana Park, Again!

November 27, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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.

Orana Park

April 10, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We have been going to Christchurch every six weeks or so for the past year and a half, for Mr. Inventor’s orthodontist appointments. Of course, these are always on weekdays, so I just take the children unless Gayle takes a day off work. The most recent one, however, was on a Saturday because the orthodontist was planning to take a few weeks off, so we made it a family trip. It happened to be Mr. Imagination’s 5th birthday, so we decided to celebrate by going to Orana Wildlife Park. What fun! It was a drizzly day, and chilly, so there weren’t as many people as usual, but the animals were more active for the most part, and we really enjoyed the day.

We enjoyed catching a glimpse of the American bison calf having a feed!

It’s always fun to feed the giraffes.

The birthday boy in front of a lion.

People pay a lot for the privilege of riding in this truck while the lions are fed.

We went back a second time to feed the giraffes.

The male rhino had apparently been taking a mud bath.

We got up close to the rhinos after their feeding, too. Little Miss had fallen down the steps at church the Sunday before this, and hit her forehead on the concrete.

By the time we left, she was tired of being there and wanted to drag her feet on the road when she was in the stroller!

And here are a few photos Mr. Diligence took of the animals.

Last Day With Grandma

December 21, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

No one wanted to go to Christchurch the last day of November. Going to Christchurch meant dropping Grandma off at the airport, and we just weren’t ready for that! The tickets said we had to take her there that day, though, so we did it. We went to church in Waikari that morning, since it is on the way to town. Going between Waikari and the highway, we crossed Weka Pass, which is a low pass through a range of hills. There are some spectacular rock formations in that pass! The last one is called Frog Rock.

Since we had about three hours in town before having to be at the airport, we went to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, a small zoo. Before entering, we were taking a picture of the children in front of this small building, and a bus driver who was waiting nearly came up and offered to take a picture of all of us! We greatly appreciated it; he said he does it all the time.

There are some beautiful spots along the trail that winds through the park.

See the black swan under the branches?

One special extra we had at Willowbank was when we happened upon a group of keepers releasing three emus into an enclosure. They had just gotten them and were opening the crate when we arrived on the scene. It was pretty funny to see those heads popping up over the edge of the crate, then hiding again. Once the door was open and the keepers were all out of the enclosure, it took a long time for the emus to get up the courage to actually leave the crate that had been their home for three days! We stayed to see one bounce out, but after 10 minutes or so moved on and left the 10 or so keepers to keep watch! This was obviously the event of the day at Willowbank!

Orana Park

October 6, 2013 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Friday we needed to pick up 100 day-old chicks in Christchurch, from a hatchery farther south. Since it was a birthday in our family, we decided to make it a family day and go to the zoo on the outskirts of Christchurch, Orana Wildlife Park. We had never gone, because it is very expensive, but decided to splurge this once. It turns out to be a very fun zoo to visit! It isn’t very big; nothing compared to some zoos we’ve been in in America as far as number of animals; but the experience was special. They have feedings scheduled through the afternoon, and organized quite well so you go from one species to another, around the zoo. For an extra $35 per person, we could have ridden in the truck from which they feed the lions! We did get to feed the giraffes; that was free, and quite fun. An older man, a volunteer, went around the route, and he seemed to really enjoy telling us more about the animals and the feeding. One really good thing about this is how active the animals are, compared to most zoos. For example, the lions–practically every zoo I’ve been to before, the lions just laid around, but here, they were running, and jumping.

I love otters!

The playground was a big hit. Would you like to be that close to lions?

Anyone who wanted to could feed the giraffes. We couldn’t get up close to the rhinos, because the male was charging even the keepers who were feeding them.

Checking out the next stop!

Willowbank

May 20, 2012 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We were able to get tickets to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve for half-price recently, thanks to a tip from a friend. The tickets were good till the end of June, so we were planning to go sometime before then, but weren’t sure when it would work out. Gayle didn’t want to take time off work for that, but neither did we want to go on a Saturday because there would likely be a lot of people there. Then, we ended up needing to go to Christchurch to meet the Vice-Consul from the American Embassy in Auckland when he made a visit to Christchurch, to get the baby’s American paperwork done and apply for his passport. The appointment was in the early afternoon on a Thursday, and both of us had to be there, so that was our perfect opportunity to take the family to Willowbank!

There were tame eels in a pond at the beginning of the tour, and a woman was spoon-feeding them with a little container of food she bought in the office. They would crawl partway out of the water onto the step!