We drove to the Maleny Botanical Garden which was located up on a ridge. To get there, we had to traverse some very steep uphill sections of the road with a 12% grade. One section was 2 km long and very curvy to add insult to injury. Our ears were popping. So too were our eyes, as we could see the Glass House Mountains stretched out to our left. We stopped at a view point and soaked it all in. The gardens were just a few more minutes down the road. When we arrived we noticed that it was decidedly cooler up here. We bought tickets for the bird experience that was to begin 25 minutes hence. While we were waiting for this, we visited an area that had a dozen or so birds on roosts that we could get very close to. There was a young man tending to the birds and giving us information about each one. I went back to the car to drop off our picnic and while I was gone the birds got very agitated. The man told Leslie that a hawk had flown over that caused the birds to react. I got a picture of the hawk and then I heard some odd calls and another pair of birds and watched them fly up from the tree line. It turned out to be a Gray Goshawk flushing out two Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos. Two new birds for my list. We headed down to the aviaries and soon we were surrounded by birds of all kinds. Visitors had to remove hats, earrings, piercings, necklaces and anything else that the birds might take a liking to. We were also given long rainbow colored feather dusters to discourage the birds form landing on us. Some folks did not take the dusters and had one or more birds on their shoulder or on their head. We thoroughly enjoyed this close up experience but as we were going through we could feel the rain that had started. Many of the birds went to the areas that were not covered so they could get a rain shower. They opened their wings and even hung upside down to get rain in all their parts. When the tour was done the rain had turned into a proper downpour. We sat in the covered entryway waiting for it to stop and then made a dash up the hill to our car. We sat in the car till it let up and we braved the 12% downhill grades on the way home.
A logging wagon with logs on it
A restaurant called the barrel
Our view on the uphill drive
Glass House Mountains
Rural means you share the road with farm equipment
Maleny Botanic Gardens and Brid World
Some of these clouds are looking dark
An even steeper descent into the gardens
A hybrid bird with Galah and a Major Mitchel
A Sun Parakeet
It is Sun kind of beautiful
A Rainbow Lorikeet with a lutino mutation
Alexandrine Parakeet
Eclectus Parrot
A Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
African Grey Parrot
Blue Indian Ring-necked Parakeet
Buddies
This Gray Goshawk got all the birds worked up
Including this Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo
The aviaries are big
Nice bloom
Some great views
This is the largest winged creature ever to fly, the Quetzalcoatlus
In we go
Nicobar pigeons, the closest living relatives to the dodos
The White Cheeked Honeyeater
A Noisy Pitta with a very bright iridescent patch on the wing
Rose Capped Fruit Dove
A forest Kingfisher on t he right
The Wompoo Fruit Dove
A female Golden Phesant
Two big Black Cockatoo
A Galah
King Parrot
Red Tailed Black Cockatoo
An young Black Cockatoo
Showing off
Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo
Another Eclectus Parrot
Two Red Lorry
A female Satin Bowerbird
The Macaw Show begins, this is a Blue and Yellow Macaw
A Scarlet Macaw
A very patriotic bird, the White-Fronted Amazon
So many seeds to choose from
The African Gray was not going to partake in any of the silliness
The male Golden Pheasants
Our guide is dwarfed by the Macaw
Put a bird on it!
That is better
Chewing on the hair tie
Everybody is getting gin on the act
Getting a shower in the rain
More is on the way!
