I was originally going to just write a “blurb” sort of review in my Australia thread as I did for Melbourne Zoo (http://www.zoochat.com/24/z-o-o-b-o-y-365965/) but I liked Moonlit so much that I thought instead I would do a full review. Also, there are no reviews on here about the place, apart for a short one in zooboy28's Australia thread (http://www.zoochat.com/24/zooboy28-australia-313826/index3.html – post #40) and that surely needed rectifying. The review I ended up doing was much longer than I had intended, and is not so much (or at least, not entirely) a cage by cage deconstruction, but more one of the overall experience because that is what Moonlit was for me: I had a lot of fun feeding wallabies and having a yellow-bellied glider pretend it was my hat and seeing feathertail gliders and owlet-nightjars again for the first time in ages. First up though, some general information. Moonlit Sanctuary is situated just out of a little town called Pearcedale which lies south of Melbourne on the Mornington Peninsula. It is easy to reach by car, but public transport can be a little trickier. During the day is easy enough. You just take the train to Frankston, then bus number 776 from right outside the train station goes all the way to Pearcedale. This bus has a fairly limited timetable so you need to work out your travel plans in advance. From Pearcedale it is just under three kilometres to Moonlit (roughly half an hour's walk and it is a pretty direct walking route – straight along the Baxter-Tooradin Road and turn right into the Tyabb-Toorabbin Road). If you are just making a day visit to the park then no problems, but the park is also open at night (hence the name, Moonlit Sanctuary) and the last bus from Pearcedale back to Frankston is at 7pm. The only real alternatives are to arrange a pick-up/drop-off (which the park does, for an extra charge) or bike from Frankston and back (you can take a bicycle on the train but not the bus). The entry fee for a day visit alone is Aus$17 which is a good price I feel. The cost of the night tour is Aus$40 per person and includes entry during the day as well, so is doubly good value. Many of the animals seen during the night tour cannot be seen during the day, and also vice versa, so it makes sense to do both! (Most of the birds and reptiles can only be seen in the day-time, but potentially all the mammal species can be seen in the night). I visited the park firstly during daylight hours (arriving about 2.30pm, spending just under two hours there) and then was back for the night tour (starting at 7pm and lasting for two hours). The review will be done in two parts to reflect this. At the end of the review I have included full species lists, divided into what you could see on a day visit and what can only be seen on a night visit. The entrance building has the reception, gift shop and cafe all in one. This won't be a usable comparison for almost anybody else, but it reminded me of a smaller-scale version of the entrance building at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch (NZ). There are quite a few animal tanks in the building, the best one from my point of view containing spinifex hopping mice. These were asleep when I arrived around 2.30pm but at the end of the day they were up and feeding and they were adorable! I am a big fan of small mammals, especially cute rodents and they don't come much cuter than spinifex hopping mice! The other tanks held a variety of snakes, lizards, frogs, fish and invertebrates (see the species lists at the end). These were all your basic herptile set-ups, but in the future the animals here will all be housed in a new reptile house, along with even more species of invertebrates and others. Currently off-show but to be included in the new section are also diamond python, a golden form of green tree snake, and frilled lizards. I would love to see a “mouse house” too, for native rodents and small dasyurids – it might be a hard sell to the public and would need some clever thinking to stop it just being a bunch of mouse tanks, but it would be a total overdose of cuteness. In my opinion at least The window of the reception's cafe area looks out onto the man-made wetland, which grows and shrinks in size according to the season. Over summer it decreases to just the deeper pool; right now I think it must be about half-full. There are a lot of wild birds using the area, including dusky moorhens, coots, purple swamphens, Pacific black ducks, wood ducks, and Cape Barren geese. I always like Cape Barren geese because when I was growing up they were in danger of becoming extinct, and now they are spreading all over the place. The ones here are pairs of genuine wild birds which live here for the free food; their offspring get driven away by the parents when they reach adulthood. Most of the animal enclosures are clustered to the left of the entrance and to the far end of the park (i.e. largely separated in two areas by the wetland). There are some more reptiles out here, in two new open-topped enclosures with the fences partially being viewing windows and partially solid. The lace monitors have their own enclosure, the other is a mix of turtles and lizards. It was too cold on the day of my visit for the lizards to be out so I only saw the turtles and part of a water dragon tail, but the enclosures look good. The only mammals down this end of the park are the koalas in standard koala pens and the dingos in a nice enclosure which gives a good feel for eastern Australian woodland without actually being in woodland. Most of the bird aviaries are down this end with several species of cockatoos (sulphur-crested, red-tailed black, little corella, and my two favourite cockatoos, Major Mitchell's and gang-gangs) as well as a male satin bowerbird and some bush stone-curlews. Two species of owls are also in avaries here, with a pair each of barn owls and barking owls. The female barking owl is extremely vociferous and gave little room for doubt as to why they are called barking owls!! At the other end of the park are a few more aviaries which contain more satin bowerbirds, musk lorikeets, superb parrots (barrabands to me), and a rainbow lorikeet. The nicest aviaries are a group of three set inside melaleuca scrub, which I thought were brand new avairies but in fact are amongst the oldest at the park! They have been recently re-landscaped and house some rather special and highly-endangered birds, namely orange-bellied parrots and regent honeyeaters. Also in these aviaries are sacred kingfishers (which I didn't see), white-browed woodswallows, black-winged stilts, and a male eastern whipbird (a female is to be arriving shortly). There aren't any walk-through aviaries at the park as yet, but they are in the plans as funds allow. Walk-throughs are expensive to build (and the bigger they get the more expensive they are) but they certainly pay their way in terms of providing space for more bird species than a row of individual aviaries would, and from a visitor perspective they are a much better attraction. They don't suit all bird species, especially for breeding purposes, but for those they do suit they are very good indeed. Most of the far end of the park is devoted to the Wallaby Walk, a walk-through wallaby enclosure which must surely be the best in the world. I don't believe I am exaggerating with that claim, but it is obviously also a matter of personal opinion. The Wallaby Walk did win the 2012 ZAA award for Small Scale Exhibit by a Small Institution though, so that probably counts for something. Most wallaby walk-throughs, where-ever you see them, boil down to a pretty empty grass paddock with a fence around it. Boring and not at all natural. The one at Moonlit is a meandering path through a natural melaleuca woodland, the trees maybe three metres high and not thickly-packed but not sparse either. It looks great and is exactly how most macropods like things done. Wallabies aren't naturally diurnal animals, but rather crepuscular or nocturnal – they like to spend the better part of the day resting up in secluded areas, maybe coming out to forage when it is quiet. They don't want to be sitting out in the open all day. The telling thing here is that the Wallaby Walk isn't separately fenced, the animals can go anywhere in the park they want, but they prefer to stay in amongst the scrub. However, if you are in the Wallaby Walk with your bag of pellets and dried corn (bought at the reception on the way in), those wallabies are quite happy to come over to you for food. Now, I'm not one of those people who wants to feed and pat everything at the zoo, I prefer to just watch the animals, but I had a great time in the Wallaby Walk. I was just like nanoboy! I fed and patted tammar wallabies and red-necked wallabies and eastern grey kangaroos. There are red-bellied pademelons in the forest as well but while they aren't hard to spot they don't like to approach the visitors. There will be swamp wallabies arriving soon as well. All up there are thirteen grey kangaroos at the park and something like seventy wallabies, so I guess there will always be some wallabies eager for food no matter how many visitors there are on that day. Inside the melaleuca forest there is an aviary in which during the day you can see tawny frogmouths. There are long-nosed potoroos living on the floor but I don't know how often you'd see them on a day visit. I didn't see them at all when I first passed the cage but at the end of the day (maybe 4pm) they were all out scuttling around looking for food. This cage is part of the night tour, and that is when you would see the squirrel gliders and yellow-bellied gliders which also live in there. At either end of the path in and out of the Wallaby Walk there are some more mammal enclosures. One is for southern hairy-nosed wombats, the male of which just arrived last week and was very active. The female seemed a little nonplussed at his bossiness. At the exit to the Wallaby Walk is an enclosure for a pair of post-reproductive Tasmanian devils and a new aviary-style enclosure with a viewing window for a female spot-tailed quoll (with a male due to be arriving some time to join her). There are a few keeper talks throughout the day at Moonlit and I do recommend trying to catch the one for Tasmanian devils at 3.30pm because a few bits of food are also put into the quoll cage. Quolls of course are nocturnal, so your best chance of seeing one I guess is on the night tour, but it is even better if you can see one in the daylight. I haven't seen a quoll for a long time – I saw one in the wild in Tasmania back in 2007 and I saw some in Taronga's nocturnal house in 2010 – so sitting there watching this quoll roaming around her space for half an hour was magic. Really beautiful animals and my absolute favourite animal there during the day visit. THE NIGHT TOUR: This is the second part of the review. The park closes at 5pm, and then the night tour starts at 7pm (although I'm guessing later in the summer because it gets dark later). As a rough tour outline, it takes two hours and starts with a snake demonstration in the reception area, followed by meeting some macropods outside (remember night is when they are most active, so there are tammars all over this area after dark). As well as visiting the devils, quolls and wombats (and at the end the dingos and owls) you also enter the aviary where the gliders are, and visit some enclosures not accessible during day visits. It is these last two encounters I will concentrate on because they are different to what you see in the day-time. I'll also just briefly mention that during the night tour we saw wild brush-tailed and ring-tailed possums and a tawny frogmouth. There are wild sugar gliders here as well, although I was not lucky enough to see one of those. The area which is completely separate from the day visitors is a fenced enclosure for southern bettongs. I did my best to encourage one to feed from my hand and finally one deigned to take one pellet, ate it, and then looked at me as if to say “there, I've eaten something, now put the food on the ground!” I also patted a couple of the bettongs, which meant I had fed and patted every macropod there except the pademelons, although later I realised I had forgotten to try and feed the potoroos when we went in their cage – I was too busy feeding gliders!! There was one potoroo in with the bettongs which made for a nice comparison in the way they moved around, the bettongs bouncing about like the miniature kangaroos they are while the potoroos scuttle more like bandicoots. In a partly glass-fronted aviary here lived feathertail gliders which I love. I saw my first ones in Taronga's nocturnal house and then at Sydney Wildlife World or whatever it was called then. Even better was the owlet-nightjar sitting on the floor of the aviary, the only other one of which I have seen being in Perth Zoo's nocturnal house in 2011. If you were trying to make a bird but only had a pigmy possum blueprint to guide you, an owlet-nightjar is what you would come up with. The glider aviary (or volplanery – I just made that word up to join my dictionary of made-up words) is pretty special. If you don't love gliding possums there's probably something wrong with you because they are about as cute as an animal can get without being a cartoon. Most people are probably familiar with sugar gliders because they are common overseas in both zoos and the pet trade. There are some sugar gliders in another cage here but the squirrel gliders are maybe twice as large as them, and the yellow-bellied gliders are even larger again, about the size of a small cat (they are the second largest glider species). As with a few other Australian animals, I had first seen yellow-bellied gliders at Taronga Zoo and had been amazed how big they were. There is a pair of them here at Moonlit, and about seven or eight squirrel gliders. As mentioned, the gliders share their cage with tawny frogmouths and long-nosed potoroos. On the night tour you get to go into the cage with all these animals and feed the gliders on fresh corn kernels. The squirrel gliders were quite interested in the food, the yellow-bellieds seemed less inclined to come down but eventually there was one on my shoulder. I was only wearing a t-shirt because New Zealanders don't feel the cold, but a jacket might have been better because their claws are like crampons!! Youch. Then the glider climbed up on top of my head, presumably under the impression that my cap wasn't quite furry enough and it needed replacing with a marsupial. I think most Zoochatters would agree that wearing a yellow-bellied glider as a hat is a great honour. The quoll may have been my favourite animal during the day, but the glider experience on the night tour would be a highlight of many zoo visits for me. I guess I am just like nanoboy after all.
species lists RECEPTION BUILDING (all also viewable on the night tour): MAMMALS: Spinifex hopping mouse REPTILES: Shingleback (Stumptail) Spotted tree monitor Rough knob-tailed gecko Carpet python - Murray-Darling - Jungle - Coastal Black-headed python Green tree frog (Litoria caerulea) Growling grass frog (Litoria raniformis) FISH: Silver perch Rainbowfish sp. INVERTEBRATES: Yabbies Spiny leaf insect (Extatosoma tiaratum – a species of giant stick insect) DAYTIME MAMMALS (all also viewable on the night tour): Eastern grey kangaroo Red-necked wallaby (the mainland subspecies, not Tasmanian Bennett's wallabies) Tammar wallaby *Swamp wallaby (arriving soon) Red-bellied pademelon Long-nosed potoroo (more likely to be seen at night) Koala Southern hairy-nosed wombat Tasmanian devil Spot-tailed quoll (more likely to be seen at night) Dingo BIRDS (only the owls and frogmouth viewable on the night tour): Emu Bush stone-curlew Black-winged (Pied) stilt Greater sulphur-crested cockatoo Little corella Major Mitchell's (Leadbeater's) cockatoo Gang-gang Red-tailed black cockatoo Superb parrot Rainbow lorikeet Musk lorikeet Orange-bellied parrot Barn owl Barking owl Tawny frogmouth Sacred kingfisher Eastern whipbird Regent honeyeater White-browed woodswallow Satin bowerbird REPTILES (none viewable on the night tour): Lace monitor Eastern water dragon Gippsland water dragon Blotched bluetongue Eastern bluetongue Cunningham's skink Eastern snakeneck turtle Murray River turtle NIGHT-TIME (species only viewable on the night tour): MAMMALS: Southern bettong Feathertail glider Sugar glider Squirrel glider (housed in a cage on the day-time route but they will be asleep inside their boxes) Yellow-bellied glider (housed in a cage on the day-time route but they will be asleep inside their boxes) BIRDS: Masked owl Australian owlet-nightjar
I have to say, the list of species makes me painfully jealous as it would many of us in the Northern Hemisphere, I suspect.
see, you need to make a visit to Australasia and see some proper animals! I don't think there were any "zoo lifers" for me at Moonlit but several of them I had seen only once or a couple of times before, and several of them I wouldn't mind how many times I'd seen them before!
The one that stings the most for me was, oddly enough, the Tammar Wallaby as this is a species I have missed seeing twice; the last animal in the UK died a week or two before I visited the collection in question, and then when visiting Zoo Leipzig last month their enclosure was being demolished, with no sign of a new enclosure anywhere. I only found out where their new enclosure was after my visit......
When I used to visit Zoos on a regular basis( its less frequent nowadays) that was one of the most irritating things that could happen- another was missing a section of a zoo altogether or remembering a species you forgot to look out for, but only after the visit and with no chance of going back again. BTW maybe Chlidonias' Zoochat name should now be 'WallabyPetter'.
As Javan Rhino and Agile Gibbon can attest, we spent much of the last hour or so of the Leipzig visit scouring the place for anywhere the Tammar could have been held but did not think to check a cul-de-sac immediately next to the lion enclosure, having taken it to be indoor viewing for the lions - which were both outside all day, thus we had no need to look at said indoor viewing. It wasn't indoor viewing for the lions
Ouch, and to be fair it is a very nice species of Wallabie . And I wish we had a collection like Moonlit Sanctuary in Europe. Chlidonias I was wondering as well if a zoo with night-opening could work in Europe. We would have the same struggle as New Zealand with the cold plus that quite some of the native small mammals wouldn't be very active in the same period.
Just to rub salt into the wounds, I've also seen all those species on the list except the Owlet-Nightjar, and I've seen half of them in the wild too. Hix
That's exactly what I meant, little blind pathways with no signage and maybe just the exhibit you were looking for tucked away at the end but you either miss it or don't bother to explore it. I've made that mistake a few times.
SPECIES LISTS, June 2017 Here is an updated species list for a visit I made in June 2017. It isn't a complete list because I skipped the outdoors reptile list (it is winter and I didn't look at the signs), and I've also skipped the tanks in the reception area (mostly reptiles) because I didn't pay enough attention to what was there. I do know the Spinifex Hopping Mice aren't present in reception any longer. Otherwise the list is set out in the same way as the original list for easy comparison. "New" means the species has been added since the original 2014 list. DAYTIME MAMMALS: [All also viewable on the night tour] *Eastern Grey Kangaroo *Kangaroo Island Kangaroo (new) *Red-necked Wallaby *Tammar Wallaby *Swamp Wallaby (new) *Red-bellied Pademelon *Long-nosed Potoroo (more likely to be seen at night, although I saw several by day) *Koala *Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat *Common Wombat (new) *Tasmanian Devil *Spot-tailed Quoll *Dingo BIRDS: [Only the owls and frogmouth would be viewable on the night tour] *Emu *Bush Stone-curlew *Black-winged (Pied) Stilt *Banded Lapwing (new) *Australian Shelduck (new - a pair from Melbourne Zoo are the only waterfowl on the property which aren't wild birds. There is also another Australian Shelduck that was a released rescue bird which has decided to stay for the free food) *Wedge-tailed Eagle (new) *Eclectus (new) *Galah (new) *Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (? - I don't remember) *Little Corella (? - I don't remember) *Major Mitchell's (Leadbeater's) Cockatoo *Gang-gang *Red-tailed Black Cockatoo *Superb Parrot (Barraband) *Rainbow Lorikeet *Orange-bellied Parrot *Barn Owl *Barking Owl *Tawny Frogmouth *Common Kookaburra (new) *Sacred Kingfisher *Eastern Whipbird *Regent Honeyeater *Helmeted Honeyeater (new) *White-browed Woodswallow *Satin Bowerbird *Zebra Finch (new) NIGHT-TIME [Species only viewable on the night tour] [Note: I did not do the night tour, so this is just from what I otherwise know. The Sugar Gliders on the 2014 list are no longer kept, and I think the Masked Owls are gone too. Rufous Bettongs are new.] MAMMALS: *Rufous Bettong (new) *Southern Bettong *Feathertail Glider *Squirrel Glider *Yellow-bellied Glider BIRDS: *Australian Owlet-nightjar
