Sylvan Heights Bird Park - Scotland Neck, NC

The pond out back of the visitor center was full of birds from around the world.

click to enlarge for reading

But the pond was just the start of our bird trip around the world.  The next enclosure was full of birds from Eurasia.

I figured we had to go to Hawaii to see a Nene.  That one honked and hissed at Nolan wanting some treat.

 

Check out the little baby.

We just didn't find descriptions for some of the birds.

Now we are on the other side of the Eurasia area

 

 

This guy didn't like how close I had come so he pecked at the camera and gave me the evil eye.

 

A pea hen and chick.  The cock is in the back and you can see him better on the following photos.

This is a better photo of the chick.

 

We've seen these in the wild in AZ.  They are small.

Just loved those blue eye brows!  It was hard to get a photo of most of the birds through the chicken wire.

The mesh had small openings so it was very hard to take photos of the next few birds.

What a bunch of clowns.

Look at those speckled legs!

Look at that lump on his beak

Next stop was The Landing Zone.  This was a netted area full of little birds.  I never saw a sign telling us what they were called but I think they are budgies, a small common parakeet indigenous to Australia.

We bought a feed stick for $1 and Nolan started gathering birds.

He could get them to climb onto his finger.

You had to stay in one place because they would land on the ground and it would be too easy to step on them if you didn't.

These two would fight so Nolan would get one on his finger to separate them.

This larger bird watched the show from his perch on a tree in the middle of the enclosure.

Fighting over the seeds.

I felt a tickle on my leg and looked down to see one on my ankle.

 

Then they started landing on our necks.   Looks like they were drinking our sweat.

I don't know how many photos I took trying to get a good one of the budgie on my neck.

Then they started landing on Nolan's head.  Hard to see this bird because it blends in with the tree in the background.

This really tickled!

Nolan's a regular bird magnet.



The visitor center had examples of the different species eggs.

We saw lots of beautiful flowers in the park.



My favorite

hibiscus on the deck