Favourite Birding Spot # 6 Cleland Wildlife Park

Entrance to Cleland Wildlife Park, South Australia

Last week I visited Cleland Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. This park is run by the National Parks and Wildlife of South Australia. It is a small part of the Cleland Conservation Park.

It has been quite a while since my last visit. In another life I had taken many groups of primary school children to this wonderful park. On quite a few of these occasions the visit was a part of a school camp at the nearby Woodhouse Scout Camp.

Southern Brown Bandicoot, Cleland Wildlife Park

The beauty of this wildlife park is that one gets a very close up look at many of the birds and animals native to Australia. These include a range of different species, including kangaroo, wallaby, wombat, echidna, bandicoots, potoroos and bettongs. In one spot you can have your photo taken with a koala. A feature of my recent visit was the absolutely gorgeous four dingo pups. They were about four weeks old.

Dingo pup, Cleland Wildlife Park

The main attraction of Cleland for me is the birdlife. The area is well wooded and so there are many native birds resident in and around the park. There are two walk through aviaries which enable one to get up close to many bird species. This is just great for photography. There is also a large wetlands area for all the water birds.

Over coming weeks I will feature some of the photos I took of the birds there. If you are impatient you might want to visit my photo gallery. I took over 200 photos that day, so you will have plenty to look at!