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Chlidonias

aviaries, Seafield Wildlife Park

a tiny council-owned collection of animals at Seafield Park in Spencerville, on the outskirts of Christchurch. It was started in the late 1960s at neighbouring Spencer Park and moved to its present location in 1996. Previously it was called either Spencer Park Wildlife Park or Spencerville Wildlife Park. Back when I first visited, around thirty years ago, there were a large number of rare NZ breeds of goat, sheep and pig, as well as parma wallabies, a patas monkey (a spare male from Orana Park), lot of birds, etc. Today it is just a few semi-derelict aviaries and some pens for kune-kune, sheep and rabbits. These aviaries are actually the old aviaries from the 1970s simply moved to the new site. They contain Barbary doves, budgies, alexandrines, red-crowned kakariki, and red-legged partridge. 15 June 2015

aviaries, Seafield Wildlife Park
Chlidonias, 15 Jun 2015
    • Chlidonias
      a tiny council-owned collection of animals at Seafield Park in Spencerville, on the outskirts of Christchurch. It was started in the late 1960s at neighbouring Spencer Park and moved to its present location in 1996. Previously it was called either Spencer Park Wildlife Park or Spencerville Wildlife Park.

      Back when I first visited, around thirty years ago, there were a large number of rare NZ breeds of goat, sheep and pig, as well as parma wallabies, a patas monkey (a spare male from Orana Park), lot of birds, etc.

      Today it is just a few semi-derelict aviaries and some pens for kune-kune, sheep and rabbits.

      These aviaries are actually the old aviaries from the 1970s simply moved to the new site (the patas monkey had been housed in one of these in the mid-80s). They currently contain Barbary doves, budgies, alexandrines, red-crowned kakariki, and red-legged partridge.

      15 June 2015
    • zooboy28
      Hadn't heard of this place Chlidonias, looks pretty past its heyday.

      I don't know of councils should keep these sort of places going if they're in this sort of state. A couple of cities do them well, New Plymouth being the standout (and Dunedin and Palmerston North being the only other decent ones I can think of), but most are just collections of old aviaries that are very poorly maintained.
    • Chlidonias
      if you'd said "Seafield Wildlife Park" to me on Sunday I wouldn't have heard of it either! It wasn't until yesterday when I went there that I even knew it had had a name and location change.

      It is in a pretty sorry state. The photo below shows a scene from 1985 of what it used to look like on its old site. The aviaries visible in the background are the same ones pictured above.

      [​IMG]


      The aviaries at Dunedin Botanic Gardens are brilliant, as are the ones at Invercargill's Queens Park (photos from both in this gallery). There is a quite nice but old walk-through aviary in Timaru as well.
    • zooboy28
      Christchurch seems to have had a relatively rich history of small zoological collections, which I'm not as aware of in the county's other main cities, possibly because they were dominated by a major collection early on, or maybe just because you have a lot of local knowledge. :D

      I've been to Dunedin, and the aviaries there were very nice. Not seen the others yet.
    • Chlidonias
      While I was at Spencerville the other day I was actually commenting to my friend on how it was strange Christchurch had so many zoological collections. Until the 1990s there was Orana Park, Willowbank, the North Brighton Zoo (aka the Mini Zoo), Peacock Springs, and Spencerville Wildlife Park all within Christchurch, as well as Birdlands at Little River just outside the city. That's three proper exotic zoo collections of varying sizes, two smaller wildlife parks, and a bird collection (and also the aviary at Woodham Park which is just one small block of aviaries, so not really countable) - all open at the same time.

      The North Brighton Zoo closed in 1996 because the owner retired. Peacock Springs still exists but hasn't been open to the general public for years (they breed a lot of native birds there now, rather than keep exotics). The collection at Birdlands was disbanded and the site became a forest reserve. But the Southern Encounter Aquarium and the International Antarctic Centre were both added to the list of zoological attractions (the Aquarium of course later closed down after the 2011 earthquakes).

      Currently collections in the city are Orana Park, Willowbank, the International Antarctic Centre (with little blue penguins), Peacock Springs (not open to the public), and Seafield Wildlife Park (which is now barely worth mentioning).
    • Cassidy Casuar
      So they don't even keep peafowl there anymore? :confused:
    • Chlidonias
      What I meant was they no longer keep anything like pelicans or monkeys. They do have a few exotic birds still, such as peafowl and mute swans, but their primary concern is endemics (e.g. shore plover, black stilt, orange-fronted kakariki, etc).
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  • Category:
    New Zealand - Other
    Uploaded By:
    Chlidonias
    Date:
    15 Jun 2015
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