If you're not a fan of beautifully coloured, exotic birds you may wish to skip this post.
After arriving at Kuranda Station and before we headed for the "Rainforest Experience" we had a gap of about 3/4 hour and decided to spend it in Birdworld which is an enclosure but it's a huge one and the birds are all flying free within it. I went round the area possible 5-6 times and so I've just lumped all the photos of the same species together irrespective of when I took them.
The first batch are all native to Australia and one or two we've actually seen in the wild already.
Rainbow Lorikeet
Pied Heron
Radjah Shelduck
Eclectus Parrot which is unusual in the parrot order for the extreme variation in colour between the sexes to the extent that when European ornithologists first saw them they thought they were two different species.
Male
Female
White-faced Heron
Major Mitchell's Cockatoo
Which looks completely different with its crest up.
Glossy Ibis
Cattle Egret in breeding plumage.
One of my all time favourites, it reminds me of Rod Stewart.
Red-tailed Black Cockatoo.
And they are expert in holding food in their claws.
Musk Lorikeet
Wandering Whistling Duck
Bush-stone Curlew which looks like it's broken both its legs but I saw it a bit later on and it was standing up OK!
Although non-native the next lot are just as beautiful and can't be left out.
Dusky Lory (Papua New Guinea)
Alexandrine Parrot (Indonesia and Southeast Asia)
At last, a Mandarin Duck (Eastern Europe and Asia) I've always wanted to see one it's just a shame this is rather a tatty specimen.
Indian Ringed-neck Parakeet (Africa and Asia) which have numerous colour mutations.
Yellow-crowned Amazon (South America)
Black-capped Parakeet (South America)
Blue-fronted Amazon (South America)
Blue and Gold Macaw (South America)
Which later on decided to hang itself upside down from a tree and squawk a lot.
Going by the noise it was making, I assumed it had got caught and was struggling to get free, but actually I think it was just performing for attention, they are very intelligent birds after all.
And last but not least, probably the main reason I wanted to visit Queensland in the first place - the fabled Southern Cassowary; a prehistoric looking, flightless bird that can grow upto 2 meters tall with a large casque on its head (like a hornbill).
A typically shy and reclusive bird, cassowaries will, like most animals, become aggressive when threatened. They possess a sharp claw, up to 12cm in length, on the inner toe of each foot and when threatened, will jump and strike with this claw, potentially resulting in lethal lacerations - they have been known to rip a man's chest open. Consequently this one wasn't roaming free like the other birds, but in a cage with wire 1.5m high. Image pinched from web.
It was fabulous, well worth the AUD23 entry ticket and I could have stayed here all day, but we were due to catch the coach to the next bit of Kuranda. Incidentally there was also a Butterfly World just next door but we only had time to visit one and I figured I'd have more luck with bird photos than flitting butterflies.