Featherdale » Featherdale Wildlife Park

Featherdale
22-05-2008

Went to Featherdale again yesterday - this is a great place to see Australian wildlife!

Lots of tourists(and tourist buses.)
Lots of primary children.(It's good for little kids - reasonably limited area; plenty of access to quiet kangas etc.)

Most people were there I suppose for the mammals; koalas, wombats, Tas. devils, kangaroos - all the usual suspects. 13 species from the kangaroo family on display, ranging from reds through yellow-footed rock wallabies, rufous bellied and red-necked pademelons to long-nosed potoroos.

Other interesting mammals included ghost bats and lots of quolls, 7 enclosures for eastern and tiger quolls.(Hard to see them though; just spotted blobs sleeping in logs.

For me, however, the true value of Featherdale is in the birds on display.
Lots of the usual avicultural subjects (cockatoos and other parrots; finches; pigeons and doves) but also a lot of softbills and nectar feeders (New Holland, brown, white cheeked and yellow-tufted honeyeaters; white-browed and white-breasted wood swallows; rainbow bee-eaters; grey-crowned babblers etc.)This is one of the (very) few places in Australia where you can see Nicobar pigeons,too.

Five southern cassowaries, including a young female which was bred at the park 18 months ago.

Every one of the 9 species of Australian owls was on display, mostly in pairs in large, high aviaries (the lesser sooty is gorgeous, with its dark eye-shadow!)

There were 12 species of birds of prey, in separate species aviaries (not all in together, like at a lot of other places) and also mostly in pairs. Stand-outs for me were the beautiful black-shouldered kites (pure white everywhere but their shoulders) and the Pacific bazas, with their crests and football shirt-like plumage.

The big drawback of Featherdale is that everything is packed in - aviaries back on to kanga. yards etc. There is not a lot of room; certainly none to spare for, say, a patch of bushland. The park is planted out, but everything is packed in. There's nowhere to expand either. When the park started it was surrounded by orchards and poultry farms; now its solid suburbia.

Over all, the place was clean and very tidy. Every enclosure had been or was being raked over. One small feature impressed me - kids could get free animal food to feed the kangas in the contact area - most similar places charge a bomb for a cup of what looks like stale breakfast cereal for this purpose.

22-05-2008

thanks for the update .
I am pleased that it is still a great place to visit -- in many ways I feel that it is underrated

22-05-2008

Ara - were their Nicobars housed in pairs or in a colony? Any indication that they had bred any?

The Gorge Wildlife Park in SA breed theirs in a colony group in a walk through aviary. Can you walk in with Featherdales?

Thanks.

22-05-2008

The gorge situation is funny, i was walking through with a softbill breeder friend and god that aviary would be expensive to fill!

Featherdale
22-05-2008

I visited Featherdale about 2 months ago. From memory, none of the aviaries were walk-through. The nearest was one aviary that effectively had a tunnel for humans to walk through, but no direct contact with those birds.

In other areas of the park they had larger birds relatively accessible - pelican, etc. The bird that absolutely stood out for me was the Chinese golden pheasant just after you enter. I never knew about this species until I was staring at one and I was blown away by the colours.

Someone here said the place was packed-in. I agree. This is good and bad - it's good from the human visitor perspective because there's not a lot of walking involved. If your kids say "let's see animal X now" you can quickly cross the whole park to do so. At the same time I felt sorry for some of the animals - particularly the birds of prey. It's true they had very many on display, but you have to feel for them when they're in relatively tiny cages.

I visited Symbio last weekend and they had eagles in fairly small enclosures too.

Australia Zoo, last year, had an enormous enclosure for their eagle by comparison to either Symbio or Featherdale.

I also noted one of Featherdale's devils had a laceration behind its ear. I suppose there's not much you can do if that's happened - but it was unsightly.

Featherdale's reptile house, although small, was quite fascinating. It was good to see medium-sized skinks on display and this is the first zoo at which I've seen the funnel-web displayed.

I too was dying to see the quolls. In the end I got a good show from one Eastern that paraded around near the front of its cage for a while. It was very timid and eventually retreated to the rear of the enclosure. However, in the mid afternoon all the spotted-tailed quolls were sleeping. My 4 year old daughter was the first (and only) person to spot a spotted-tailed quoll - despite the quoll being curled up on a ledge right at the top back corner of the enclosure. We didn't even see tufts of fur in the other cages sadly. This is not the park's fault of course - but it was one of the main reasons I visited

They also have a number of albino animals which is unique.

Chris.

23-05-2008

@ara and youcantry: informative, detailed reviews of Featherdale Wildlife Park. Last year I visited Healesville Sanctuary near Melbourne, spent over three hours there, and was extremely impressed with the range and diversity of the animal collection. How does Featherdale stack up in comparison to Healesville?

Healesville compared to Featherdale
23-05-2008

Hi Snowleopard,

I spent two days at Healesville - one with a group, the other with just the family.

Healesville is far, far larger. At Healesville you walk through the kangaroo enclosures, you have a bird show in an amphitheatre, there's a creek running through the centre and perhaps 100m of track that just ambles through the understory beside the creek. The wetlands is also walk-through; they have 6 or 8 devils in one display plus an ancient 8 year old female in a display on her own. They have the platypussery and the vet hospital is open to the public with interactive displays and activities that you or your children can enjoy; you can even watch the vets do their work through the glass walls, or on the large TV screen. There are food outlets in at least 3 places and there are playgrounds for the kids. One info booth has taxidermies you can hold and touch and they have an educational program (which I attended with my group) where kids interact with tawny frogmouths, reptiles, sugar gliders, lizards, insects, etc, etc.

Featherdale is - as was noted earlier - surrounded by suburbia now. It may sound harsh to describe it this way, but it's a bit like a supermarket - you go up and down the aisles looking into the enclosures. There is precious little open space and while there is some, it is much smaller than at Healesville. The single food outlet is about the size you'd expect a primary school canteen to be. The toilet blocks are old and tiny. You don't walk through the kangaroo enclosures; rather, you observe from the edge - with one exception - there is an area where you can feed some kangaroos. Their tiny nocturnal house had two exhibits - bats and (if I recall correctly) Bilbies; at Healesville there were probably about half a dozen exhibits.

Again, as mentioned above, one strength of Featherdale is its birdlife, and I guess the name of the park hints at that. The aviaries of the smaller birds I found to be excellent. They were large (for the size of the birds within) and well stocked with shrubs, bushes, trees, etc - so the birds really looked like they loved living in there.

It's true they do have a lot of owls on display, but again, for the size of the bird the enclosures seem small.

I took two small children along and they loved both zoos of course. Featherdale is probably better for smaller children because there's less distance to walk around.

Just checked - your question actually asked about the diversity in the collection. In that regard, Featherdale is in fact quite impressive - especially for its small land size. There are certainly plenty of bird species including many raptors; a small but interesting number of reptiles; many kangaroo species (as noted earlier); the two quoll species; a saltwater crocodile; two devils; farm animals; 1 bat species; the bilby (which I didn't see); koalas; an echidna and dingoes. There's probably more that I've missed.

comparison
23-05-2008

I agree totally with the comparison that youcantry gave ; but it is a little like comparing Paignton Zoo with Chester , or Caldwell Zoo with Bronx .

Healesville has been in existance for quite some time now , and is part of the 3 zoo group called Victoria Zoos ( or Zoos victoria ? ) It is the Melbournes centre for research and conservation for Australian species .

Healesville will be the TOP lead collection of Australian natives , way ahead of whoever wants to be in second place

Featherdale is one good example of a small "roadside" zoo that has done quite well for themselves and its animals . They are a private organisation , and wont have funding from the Taronga/WPZ pair . But they have worked at being the best that they can within their restraints .
I visited have Featherdale about 4 times now . The first time being 1981 . It started off as being quite a basic place with a small collection ( adequate but certainly nothing flashy ) Over the years the collection has grown and the enclosures have all been upgraded etc .
For all of its constraints , Featherdale has done an excellent job

chalk and cheese?
23-05-2008

Thanks Nigel, I completely agree. It is a bit like comparing chalk and cheese - both good for their own reasons.

23-05-2008

@youcantry: thanks for the detailed response. On my Aussie adventure last year I found Healesville to be highly impressive, and had gathered from many visitors that it was the best place in Australia for indigenous wildlife. Also, the Alice Springs Desert Park has some brilliant exhibits, particularly the nocturnal house.

23-05-2008

youcantry -
A good summary, and I'm inclined to agree with you about the raptors; while it is interesting to see so many species (many of which you can't see anywhere else - certainly not Taronga), there is something sad about seeing these birds confined in this way.

Steve -
Featherdale's Nicobar pigeons are housed in a colony, not pairs, and the aviary is not walk-through. (youcantry is correct; there are no walk-throughs here.) The aviary is approx. 8 metres x 5 metres, not overly tall (about 2.2 metres), planted with hardy shrubs. There are about 9 or 10 birds. According to the keeper, they do breed them successfully, but lose a few as babies.

22-09-2008

I see in a magazine article that Featherdale have come out and claimed to have "the largest collection of Australian animals in the world" (Somebody must have been crunching the numbers.)

Wonder what the other big players (Healesville and Currumbin) have to say about that?

22-09-2008

maybe they have a colony of bulldog ants to bulk up their numbers

__________________
nod if you can read this