Zooboy28 in America

The chances of seeing a sea otter are almost 100% if you go to the right place along the coast. You can see them off of the wharf in Monterey. You can see them along 19 Mile Drive in Carmel. The Point Lobos State Preserve on Carmel is an excellent place to see them. They can be seen fairly close to San Francisco now that they have expanded their range north.

 

I would add that Pt. Lobos is perhaps the single most beautiful place on earth (and I've been lucky to see a lot of amazing sights on many continents)--it is a Japanese coastal seascape painting come to life, with sea lions (both species), harbor seals, sea otters, dolphins and whales all very likely sightings.

And there are elephant seals at San Simeon year round, literally right next to the coastal highway. The drive between Pt. Lobos and San Simeon is one that everyone should experience at least once--simply stunning.

 

Once in Point Lobos the sea otters were so close to shore that we could hear them banging open urchins with rocks. There was a mother otter teaching her pup how to do it.

 

Northwest Trek is, in my opinion, the best wildlife park in the United States. It must be reached by car, but maybe you can talk Snowleopard into picking you up in Seattle and taking you there for the day.

 

Wish I knew that three months ago. On the other hand I was there for the aquarium and time was limited.

 

Thanks for all the comments. I have reconfigured the trip slightly, so that now instead of spending two days driving from San Fran to San Diego via Yosemite National Park, we will now on the second day drive from Yosemite National Park back to San Fran, and fly to San Diego. This allows us time to drive along the coast, and hopefully see elephant seals, sea lions and maybe even sea otters. If time is going good, we might even go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but we'll see how it goes.

This means we won't have a rental car in San Diego as initially planned, which makes it somewhat difficult to visit the San Diego Zoo Safari Park (or whatever you prefer to call it). Their website is utterly unhelpful in terms of getting there with public transport, and the website it directs you too is also fairly hostile, suggesting that from downtown San Diego it will take me about three hours on a bus, and then I'll still have to walk a mile! So without renting a car, which I will do if I have to, is there an easy way to get there?

 

Welcome to California and our wonderful world of public transportation. Eventually there might be a bullet train going everywhere, but probably not for another decade of two - they are due to start construction sometime soon.

Getting from the San Diego Zoo to the Safari Park is a real pain if you don't have a car unfortunately, as you are finding. Finding a budget rental car place and renting a car for the day might be your best option, but aren't you planning on renting one to drive up the coast? If you are renting a car for your coastal journey, maybe you could just make the first day of the car rental for getting to the Safari Park. It will be worth the effort.

 

What is the date of your visit to the safari park? I may (still undecided) be there on Tuesday, May 27 and would be happy to give you a ride if it works out.

Sadly, there is no practical way to get there on public transportation. This is unfortunate, as I am a big fan of public transportation myself.

 

Well we were going to keep the rental car for the first couple of days, but that was because I thought the elephant seals were between SD and LA, not LA and SF. So at this stage we won't now need a rental car in SD, except to get to the Safari Park.

 

Thanks for the offer AD, but I won't be there until the 3-5 June (haven't finalised exact date yet). I too am a fan of public transportation, generally cheaper and less stressful than driving in a new city (and on the wrong side of the road!). All our within city movements should be do-able with public transport I think!

 

At least the rental cars in the states are all automatic transmission. When I did a one day rental in Scotland last year, I had to sit and drive on the wrong side AND shift manually with the wrong hand!

 

Alright - I realise its been awhile since the last post here, but that's about to change. I have spent my three and a bit weeks in America and am now back in Australia, and have spent a bit of time writing up species lists and reviews. Hope you enjoy them!

 

Days One – Seven

Flights to America are long, and in fact the flight from LA to Melbourne is the longest (15 hours 50 minutes) commercial flight in the world. Fortunately, flying to LA from Melbourne is quicker (14 hours 20 minutes) due to prevailing winds. My flight departed Melbourne at 9am on Saturday morning, and arrived at LAX at 6am on Saturday morning. Local times obviously. En route I watched The LEGO Movie, Saving Mr Banks, The Wolf of Wall Street and Turbo, as well as assorted TV shows. Having seen The LEGO Movie, a large part of my time in America was spent singing its theme tune “Everything is Awesome”, beginning in the arrivals hall of LAX, where they have politely changed my status from “alien” to “visitor”.

America is a rather scary place for non-Americans I feel, certainly this was my impression going in, and customs (and airport security as I went through to the next terminal for my connecting flight to Portland) did little to change this. The next flight was a few hours away, so I spent a while in a most boring terminal, had a bagel and coffee, and then was further delayed due to the plane being over-full and ultimately having to be de-fuelled! How is that even a thing?

In Portland, I was staying with a colleague at an airbnb home, in which we had the beautiful light-filled loft. The area we were staying in was full of old houses with wild gardens, which were very green and lush. Ideal for spotting birds! However the first creature I saw, apart from crows, was a grey squirrel, which is a nice mammal from my point of view, and always a joy to see, being such busy creatures. In fact, bird-wise I didn’t do particularly well, apart from cosmopolitan species such as crows, starlings, sparrows and mallards, I hardly saw anything. The few I did see were mostly LBJs I have yet to identify!

I spent Sunday working on my conference presentation, although I went for a couple of walks, and got to experience my first American supermarket too. The conference, the Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting, was held in a massive conference centre and was attended by around 3000 people. This was my first international conference and rather daunting, but I had a great time and met some great people. My talk wasn’t until the last day, which was less than ideal, but when my turn came it went fairly well I think.

The conference ran Monday-Friday, 8am to 6pm, often with events afterwards too, so I didn’t get a lot of time for other activities during the week. I had Starbucks for breakfast every day, and had dinner at a few different breweries. Portland is a really nice city, and the people generally friendly and helpful. Some of the highlights for me were Pioneer Square (which was blocked off for the conference dinner one night), Washington Park, Voodoo Donuts and Powell’s Bookshop. This bookshop is amazing. I spent only an hour there, but that was only because I made a last minute decision to visit on my last night, and it closed at 11pm. There are over 1 million books in stock and it is considered the world’s largest independent bookshop. It even has a “zoo books” section. I picked up a couple of books from San Diego Zoo, a book on zoos in general, and a novel to read on my trip.

Obviously what everyone here cares about is the zoos, and Portland does have a zoo, and I managed to visit it on day five (see future post!). It also has an aquarium (Portland Aquarium), which I was planning to visit, despite the generally negative reviews it has received. However, it was not at all easy to reach, and would take ages via public transport, or a lot of money for a taxi, so in the end I didn’t visit.

Overall, I found Portland to be a great city to begin my exploration of America. The weather was great, and the days really long (compared with Melbourne). The friendly and helpful people made me feel good about America, and relaxed about being there. In fact, the only real negative was that the city’s water supply went bad on the last day, meaning any food or drink prepared with that water was officially unsafe to eat, leaving few options. Having said that, I don’t think I could actually live there.

 

You haven't drunk bad city water until you have tasted Dallas water. Yuck! There's a reason why I prefer bottled water.

 

I have never heard of a city water supply being unsafe in an American city. That is bizarre.

And yes, sadly, Los Angeles has an airport that is not worthy of America's most well known cosmopolitan area. (The same could be said for its zoo - oops did I really say that? ).

 

Yes, it was very unusual to have an entire city needing to boil water (although the "need" was probably somewhat exaggerated). Also rather coincidental for it to occur when the world's largest water science conference is happening in town...

I was a bit disappointed by LAX, for such a famous airport it was very underwhelming.

 

Day Five

Oregon Zoo is located in Washington Park, to the west of downtown Portland. It can be reached via the MAX light rail system, specifically the Washington Park station, which is the deepest underground rail station in North America. Once at the station, an elevator takes you 80 metres to the surface, from where the zoo entry is a minute’s walk away. Entry is fairly cheap, just $10 for students, including a $1.50 discount for arriving via public transport.

The entry plaza, and the upper portion of the zoo, is nestled on a wooded slope that provides a brilliant and immersive backdrop to the first exhibit precinct – The Great Northwest. The first enclosure is a naturalistic paddock with rocky outcrops for Rocky Mountain Goats, and this works very well. The next exhibit is a steep slope for American Black Bears, traversed via a raised boardwalk, which leads to a well-vegetated Bobcat cage, both of which offer excellent views of these carnivores. Heading down the slope, a bridge leads into a walk-in aviary for two Bald Eagles. These are cleverly housed above a large tank for various Salmonids, which can be viewed through an underwater window. This is one of the best aviary set-ups I have encountered, and the use of a waterfall to hide the underwater viewing area from the eagle viewing is brilliant.

Following on from the Salmonid viewing are indoor exhibits for native and invasive turtles, followed by indoor viewing of outdoor exhibits for an active group of North American River Otters, and then North American Beavers, although these were in a den, with their exhibit full of waterfowl. Further on, but still inside, were an array of terrariums for native reptiles and amphibians, and finally a darkened enclosure for Ringtails. Exiting this building takes you into a native waterfowl aviary, outside of which is a lower viewing area for the bears, and then a Cougar exhibit. The final exhibit in this area is the brand-new, and very good, aviary for three male Californian Condors, which at the time I visited were feasting on a calf carcass. This new addition is world-class and certainly provides a lot of confidence for the other new exhibits planned for this zoo.

Passing the Children’s Zoo, the next exhibit was a high-walled Polar Bear enclosure, which was outdated, but did have some modern improvements such as dirt and grass. However these appeared to do little for the lone inhabitant, who was displaying concerning stereotypical behaviour. This is one of the exhibits slated for replacement in the near future. I should point out that, despite being a Wednesday, the zoo was packed, and this area and the next were extremely congested which made it feel probably worse than it actually was.

Next is the beginning of the Asian Rainforest area, with an outdated Sun Bear exhibit and pens for Visayan Warty Pigs and Barbirusa – nothing impressive here, but the new elephant enclosure will wrap around the back of these I think, and they will hopefully be improved in the future. Opposite is the rainforest house “Fragile Forests”, with Orang-Utans and White-cheeked Gibbons housed in a rather odd exhibit that doesn’t really work. Inside the house, the theme changes to an African rainforest, with a bad Mandrill exhibit, and a quite reasonable Chimpanzee one. The final part of the house contains South American species, including White-faced Sakis and Black Howler Monkeys, and various reptiles, amphibians and fish. Bizarrely there were no birds in the entire complex, which was disappointing.

Next up is the Asian Elephant exhibit, which is pretty basic, with a typical elephant house and yard set up – generally barren and small. But fortunately under major renovation and expansion, the plans look great and hopefully this turns into an excellent facility. Views of the elephants were largely obscured by construction, and only a small area of the exhibit could be seen up close, although views of the herd were possible from a distance. I would very much like to re-visit this facility when it opens; I think I’ll be impressed.

The next part of the zoo was Africa, and this began with the modern “Predators of the Serengeti” complex. The worst thing about this was a lack of space for visitors – too narrow hallways and paths, with limited viewing of several exhibits made this unpleasant, although the generally spacious and well thought out enclosures were much appreciated. An entry building displayed Dwarf Mongoose and a small selection of reptiles. Cleverly, a series of Perspex tunnels lead out of the main mongoose exhibit, through the excellent Caracal exhibit, to a smaller enclosure, providing both species with some enrichment. Surrounding the building were three enclosures, for Cheetah, African Wild Dog and African Lion. These were all great enclosures and also featured some very good educational signage.

The next part of Africa was the Vollum Aviary, a tall glass cylinder attached to a function centre with a selection of mostly-common African birds, not all of which were labelled. The most interesting species here were an Oxpecker and a Hornbill which chased each other around a food bowl. Outside was a paddock for Black Rhino and an outdated Hippo enclosure, both of which could use renovation. This was followed by a large grassy paddock, with a number of mature trees, with Speke’s Gazelle and Gerenuk, two excellent new mammal species! This exhibit had previously also held zebra, and the return of this species would be an improvement. An adjacent (and approaching too artificial) exhibit holds more Speke’s Gazelle, Reticulated Giraffe and Southern Ground Hornbill, and is nicely overhung with some leafy trees, with another couple in the exhibit itself. Between these two exhibits is the giraffe house, which also has exhibits for Naked Mole Rats and some desert reptiles, and a tall old cage nearby for De Brazza’s Guenons.

The final part of Africa is the Rainforest, a series of indoor and outdoor exhibits. The first is a standard small pen for African Crested Porcupines, which sits outside a crocodile house with a decent and large exhibit for Slender-snouted Crocodile and other reptiles, although the Nile Monitor enclosure is rather small and barren. Outside is a large, well-planted walk-through aviary for Lesser Flamingo and other African waterfowl, and it’s great to see flamingos and ibis displayed in this setting. Further along the trail is a netted exhibit for Allen’s Swamp Monkey and Black-and-White Colobus, which is nice although only one of each species appeared to be on display. The final exhibit is the bat house, which consists of a central visitor’s area surrounded by rather barren enclosure for three Fruit Bat species, which at least offered great views of these active animals, and provided a decent amount of enrichment, although it wasn’t at all naturalistic.

The final area of the zoo includes some disparate exhibits including the ridiculously overstaffed Lorikeet Landing, horribly outdated Amur Leopard and Tiger exhibits, and a small but appreciated Insect House. Nearby is the Penguinarium, with Humboldt Penguins and Inca Terns. This is a rather dismal exhibit, and I don’t really understand why they need to be always inside, I would have thought they could have handled an outdoor exhibit in Portland. The very last exhibits in this section are in Steller Cove, and contain a couple of marine fish tanks and rock pools, an excellent Sea Otter exhibit and a reasonable Steller’s Sea Lion enclosure, with a massive inhabitant. The final animals I saw were a Red-tailed Hawk and a Western Screech Owl, being walked around the zoo by a couple of friendly volunteers.

Overall, Oregon Zoo was rather surprising. Given the negative press surrounding the place recently, I wasn’t expecting such an impressive collection – a full complement of large and small mammals, decent range of reptiles and birds, although some big holes in the bird collection, as well as a few fish and invertebrates. The enclosures run from amazing to abysmal, but the new ones are great and a good indication for the future, which includes plans for new elephants and polar bear enclosures, as well as new rhino and primate exhibits. Hopefully any change in management doesn’t derail these plans. All in all, it was a great visit, and I was genuinely impressed with my first American zoo.

 

All those species were great, although the view of the cacomistle was a bit boring, it was curled up sleeping in a fairly dark box, although I could get a fairly good view. The Slender-snouted Crocodile was rather cool too.

Zoo lifers included 21 species, many of which were North American species that are rarely found in overseas zoos:
Rough-skinned Newt, Western Toad, Pacific Tree Frog, Western Pond Turtle, Slender-snouted Crocodile, Mali Spiny-tailed Lizard, Warren’s Girdle-tailed Lizard, Southern Alligator Lizard, California Mountain Kingsnake, Cinnamon Teal, Redhead, California Condor, Southern Masked Weaver, Red-billed Oxpecker, Gerenuk, Speke’s Gazelle, Ringtail, North American Beaver, North African Crested Porcupine, Southern Sea Otter, Steller’s Sea Lion.

I also saw wild Steller's Jays and a couple of other to-be-identified passerines.