The kids and I went to the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch, mostly to see some Kiwi birds. I'm not sure what we were expecting, but as Finn said, "This place is definitely not a zoo." The wildlife reserve has lots and lots of different birds: ducks, swans, geese, chickens, roosters that roam free. They just casually mingle in and out with the wildlife that are in their pens, and you can get VERY close to the animals and even carry food to feed them.
Maggie was especially freaked out by the birds; it did feel like some of these bigger duck/geese/swan type birds were following us or going to attack us. There were a few times we turned around on a path because we were too freaked to cross the mean-mugging bird - lol.
The highlights were seeing Eels (gigantic and gross, hard to believe they inhabit all the streams around here); Wallabies (including one carrying a baby in her pouch); Chinese Geese (with blunt green beaks, also called hog geese b/c they grunt like pigs), Capybaras (which you could lean over the fence and pet); and walking through the nocturnal Kiwi house (it was DARK and they were kind of hard to spot, but we saw two. Maggie panicked in the nocturnal house and made us get out just as quickly as we had gone in).
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| Piglets cuddling |
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| Random stilts laying around |
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| Lorelai and Rory |
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| Love this Gilmore Girls reference |
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| Capybara's |
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| I'm done here... |
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| So many birds... |
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| Wallaby with baby |
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| Wallaby with ducks |
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| Is that bird bigger than me? Yikes! |
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| Stop looking at me, Swan! |
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