San Diego

We spent last week in San Diego, on Mission Bay.  We walked on Mission Beach one day, and on the sea cliffs of La Jolla another.  We also walked around parts of Mission Bay.  Below are the sea lions of La Jolla:

But mostly, we watched the Olympics!  This is the first time in my life I have been able to watch the Olympics during the day.  Not that I would recommend it necessarily, but it was fun to do once.  I love figure skating, and the snowboarding was amazing.

On Friday, we finally got motivated and went to see the San Diego Zoo.  I had been there a couple of times before, years ago.  But it is always changing and reinventing itself.  Besides which, it has the reputation of being one of the best zoos in the world.  And the weather was perfect.

As you may have guessed from my blog, I love animals.  So expect a slew of animal pictures, including pandas and koalas.

But first, birds.  The San Diego Zoo has several aviaries, some the largest I have ever seen.  The Owens Aviary is the oldest of them, and now houses birds from Southeast Asia.  The San Diego Zoo takes advantage of ravines in the landscape by building aviaries in them from the bottom up.  This one is 82 feet high, 150 feet long, and 74 feet wide.  A waterfall graces the hillside within the aviary.

We walked through three of the aviaries, each with birds from different parts of the world.  The Owens Aviary includes the bird below, a male Gouldian finch.  It is a most elaborately-colored little bird, from Australia.

  
The female metallic starling is one of the few species where the female is more interesting than the male.  She looks like she is wearing a pin-striped suit!  Both the male and female have bright red eyes.  The male is basically black, although dark green, blue and purple colors show up depending on the light.

Oh, what are those bright colors amongst the flowers?

A black-capped lory!  This bird, like other lories, likes to eat nectar, pollen, fruit, and insects.

I love kingfishers - their bills are so impressive!  This species, the white-breasted kingfisher from southeast Asia, is a large one, up to 8 inches in length.

Here is the African spoonbill, very much like the roseate spoonbill of Florida:

There was a definite excitement in the air in the aviaries.  There was a lot of gathering of nesting materials, and males performing for females.  Spring is definitely on the way, and the birds know it!

My favorite (for the moment, anyway) was the cock-of-the-rock from South America.  What a great bird.  One of them kept swooping down on the people below, including me.  This guy had attitude!

I was delighted to see Inca terns.  My sister saw these when she was in Peru in November, and it was one of her favorite birds.  It is a very striking tern.

In its own aviary was the secretary bird from the plains of Africa.  This bird has long legs so that it can walk through high grasses as it looks for insects and small animals to eat.

This bird's mate was sitting very conscientiously and matronly on a nest nearby:

Look at her beautiful head crest and amazing eye lashes.  What a beauty!  Perhaps she was the inspiration for Las Vegas show girls?

The secretary bird has a very unique way of strutting.  Click on the link below to see a video that I took:

http://youtu.be/WbGGXc7r-sU


He reminds me of a dandy from the court of Louis XIV!

I will do the animals in a separate post, to prevent this one from becoming too long.  I feel the San Diego Zoo is such a notable zoo, it is worth two posts.  I hope you find it interesting.  Remember, the panda and koalas are still to come!