A Trip to the Aviary with the Pieps

On Mother's Day weekend, one of Brent and Julie's sons-in-law had free tickets into the Tracy Aviary. So they invited us to go along. John had to work, as usual, but Gabe and I went and had a great time.
Anyway . . . here are a few pictures of what we did and saw that day.

Pelicans --
Andean Condor -- it always turned its back right when I wanted to get the picture!

That is one - big - bird!
Injured golden eagles -- there are no fences around their enclosures.
I think this is a kind of cuckoo.
There was this traveling exhibit -- supposedly the world's largest ball of string. It really looked impressive. All the tags hanging around were ideas of what people would do if they had that much string. However, on closer inspection, you could see the styrofoam form it was wrapped around. Still lots of string, just not as impressive.

These other kids are Gabe's cousins from the Piep side.

The kids had a great time just running up and down the ramp. The artwork on the side apparently gets changed every time the ball of string gets moved.
Back to the birds--



I didn't realize swans had such big feet! That part doesn't show when they are swimming!
Clarke Planetarium had a little site there, too. This is Gabe and Alex trying to pull off a piece of an electromagnet. It took both of them to do it.
This bird was part of the bird show. We were early enough in the season that they were still training their birds. This was an emu --
Here's where we got to feed the birds. On the computer on the other side, I have a picture of Gabe with 3 of them on his arms! I'll try to get that on tomorrow. It may show up as a new post altogether. It was fun having them sit on my hand to eat the apple!
This silly video is a bird that makes the strangest sound. As we approached its cage, I thought someone had touched one of those sound buttons, but no, it was real! So, I had to see if the camera would capture it. It did --



With summer just getting started, we'll have much more to blog about soon. In the meantime, we'll see everyone else in their blogs, too. Have a happy summer!!!!!