San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Escondido
May 26, 2018
We headed to the Safari Park (formerly known as the Wild Animal Park) early Saturday morning, for the opening weekend of the new exhibit, Walkabout Australia. A lot of care has gone into the layout and decoration of the exhibit. Part of it, particularly the building with a snack bar and gift shop, is designed to look like a sheep station in the Australian outback. We were amused by the fake sheep statues in one grassy area near that building.
We enjoyed strolling through the exhibit, particularly the Marsupial Walk. Visitors can stroll along the pathway through a grassy area where kangaroos and wallabies hop around, sometimes crossing the path.
We learned some of the differences between kangaroos and wallabies, which look much alike. Kangaroos are bigger for one thing. Both are called “macropods,” because of their big feet. One detail at the park makes it easy to spot the difference; a docent told us that their kangaroos have tags in their ears while the wallabies do not. Several native Australian birds live in the same Marsupial Walk area, magpie geese and radjah shelducks. Visitors can also look into the Marsupial Walk area without entering it. Entry is through double doors, like the aviary entries. During busy times the number of visitors allowed in with the kangaroos and wallabies may be limited, but we had no wait to get in.
After we left that area we stopped to listen to a zoo educator who told a group of us about the kookaburra she had perched on her hand. We learned those birds are a type of kingfisher, and she coaxed the bird into making the distinctive “laughing kookaburra” call.
In an adjacent area we saw a tree kangaroo, native to New Guinea. They are seriously endangered, and the zoo participates in a captive breeding program to try to maintain the species. Near him was another enclosure where we saw a cassowary, a very large ostrich-like bird with a blue head.
The Union Tribune ran a thorough article about the new exhibit on the Thursday before our visit; it was a good preview for us.
After we left the Walkabout Australia area, we wandered through the World Gardens, an extensive set of trails with a variety of plants, all of them adapted to dry climates and including many succulents. We went on from there to Condor Ridge, where we were fortunate to see the condors flying short distances within their enclosure.
From there we walked the Tiger Trail area. The day of our visit was the 20th birthday of the senior female, Delta, and her keepers had given her a birthday “cake.” The cake consisted of a block of ice with a large meaty bone embedded in it. In a separate enclosure we saw two young male tigers. We had apparently just missed some play tussle between them. When we came along they were just lazing under a tree.
We walked around a bit and saw some other enclosures, then decided to go. The nice thing about being members of the San Diego Zoo is that we can enjoy part of the zoo in Balboa Park or the Safari Park in North County without feeling obliged to see the whole place in a single visit. The Safari Park offers a great deal more to see than what we saw on this visit. On past visits we have enjoyed taking the monorail out to see the African Plains and Asian Savannah areas. It is a rare sight, to observe the herds of animals roaming freely across a big area.
Just before leaving, we stopped at the education area near the main entrance and listened to another park educator show and talk about first a pancake tortoise, and then a ball python.