Peel Zoo Review

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I had one further zoo left to visit while I was in Australia which was Peel Zoo. Peel Zoo is located not too much over an hour’s drive to the south of Perth in the small town of Pinjarra, the nearest big city to which is Mandurah about twenty minutes away by car. On the drive down to Peel, it is worth noting that I saw a wild Wedge-tailed Eagle from the car flying overhead, which was, somewhat surprisingly, my first wild Wedge-tailed Eagle for the trip.

Though Peel isn’t a huge zoo, I wanted to visit from Perth because I had heard it was quite a nice zoo with some interesting species there. The zoo is in quite a nice setting in an area of parkland by the Murray River (not the big one in the south east obviously, but a smaller one) in the Ravenswood Sanctuary which is a recreational park thing with restaurants, various attractions, and some real estate areas. The zoo, obviously, is one of those attractions.

The Murray River is just outside the entrance to the zoo, and it is quite an attractive entrance with some planting and a water feature, though there is a less attractive cage just outside the doorway holding two pet Little Corellas, though this was a larger cage than at the entrances to either Cohunu Koala Park or Armadale Reptile Centre which also had corellas in small cages by the entrance. Inside where I bought my ticket, there was a little gift shop, and I was given a piece of paper that was the guide to the animals at the zoo. At this point, it would be appropriate to explain the signage system at the zoo. Each enclosure is numbered with 1 to 76 and also has a QR code and with the exception of maybe half a dozen signs at most around the zoo, that is the entirety of the signage on enclosures as can be seen in this picture. These numbers then corresponded to the numbered list on the piece of paper I had just been given at the entrance with the enclosure number, species common name, and the names of the individual animals given. And that’s it. There’s no information about the animals, no picture, and not even a scientific name. I should also add that I did scan one of the QR codes just to see whether there was any more information, and it was just the species common name. I would say the average zoo visitor may not know which quail was a King Quail and which was Japanese with the two species sharing the enclosure and no suggestion of which was which. I found it annoying enough that the zoo didn’t put proper signs on each enclosure, but I wouldn’t have minded so much if the numbers corresponded to some proper informational signage. Even including an additional column for scientific names would have been an improvement! I found the ridiculous signage style to be quite annoying actually, and I should also mention that the species list on the piece of paper didn’t even list everything! There were numerous unsigned species, the list did not include details on the species in the walkthrough aviary, and there were listings like 'finches' with no further details. I’d have thought information on what the finch species were was far more important than knowing the individual names of each of the Tasmanian Devils or that the rabbit’s name was Vespa! I have attached a picture of the sheet with the animal names in the post below in case anyone is interested.

Minor rant about the signage aside, I will continue with the review of the zoo. The area around the entrance

has a few picnic tables and around these are several peafowl, chickens, and guineafowl roaming around. Though they can roam freely around the zoo, they seemed to mostly stay around this area, and there was even a peacock sitting on the wall above the toilet. The entrance area also houses the zoo’s small reptile collection in open-topped outdoor enclosures (except the Frill-necked Lizards which were in an enclosed terrarium), and all the reptile enclosures seemed adequately sized, though the water area for the Oblong Turtles was a little bit small. Rather oddly in one of the Blue-tongued Skink enclosures was a rather poorly taxidermied ostrich! Also at this entrance area was a large aviary for Blue-and-gold Macaw and Laughing Kookaburra, and this was enclosure #1 (the reptile enclosures are actually listed as the final enclosures as numbers 71 to 76).

I then exited the area continuing around to enclosure number two as is, I assume, the intended way of going around the zoo. Enclosures #2 to #16 held the vast majority of the zoo’s small mammal collection with a variety of small native mammals including Possums, Quolls, Bettongs, Long-nosed Potoroo, Quokka, Squirrel Glider, Southern Koala, a few domestics (Ferret, Guinea Pig, Rabbit) and most interestingly for me was Black-footed Tree-rat which was a species I had not seen before. Sadly, their two individuals were not very active and remained curled up in their boxes (that had a transparent side allowing for viewing). Apart from the Quokka which had an open-topped enclosure, all of the enclosures were mesh aviary-type enclosures, and whilst not being particularly attractive for viewing, they mostly seemed to be pretty good with many exceptionally big enclosures for the inhabitants, for example the squirrel gliders.

Within this small mammal section, there was also an enclosure for Emus that was rather odd since it actually went around the back of all the small mammal enclosures with viewing from a small bit at the end that was tucked around the corner. As a result of this enclosure being squeezed into a corner, it seemed quite small, though according to the map, the enclosure gets much wider and much more open towards the end. Seemed a bit pointless though since most of it was not visible from the public paths.

After the small mammal area, I came to two walk-in enclosures, one for Western Grey Kangaroos and one opposite for sheep. The sheep enclosure was extremely muddy due to some extremely heavy rain in the last couple of days (many of the enclosures were muddy as a result of this) so there were no people in there, but there were a few people feeding the kangaroos with the pellets provided by the zoo in the other enclosure, and some Common Bronzewings and Purple Swamphens were also around to pick up dropped pellets.

Continuing past this, I then entered the bird section, or more specifically the parrot section, as all of the species held there were parrots.

This section had a row of aviaries as well as eight aviaries arranged around a circle, and they seemed to all be pretty average enclosures. They could maybe have done with being bigger for some of the larger cockatoo species, but for the smaller parrots especially they were pretty good. Behind these aviaries, and stretching along the edge of the zoo on this side behind a lot of enclosures was a paddock for Red Deer, Fallow Deer, and Alpaca, though as with the sheep enclosure, this was very muddy too. Rather interestingly, I saw a wild Red-capped Parrot through one of these parrot aviaries and in the deer and alpaca paddock behind.

After looking around these aviaries, I continued on to the large walkthrough aviary which holds a mixture of parrots, pigeons and doves, and pheasants with quite a large number of species – everything on the bird section of the species list from Crested Pigeon to Princess Parrot.

There were lots of branches, and perches, and nest boxes for the birds, as well as a large feeding area, though the lack of much greenery at all made it seem a bit bare. I suppose live plants may not survive for very long with the number of large parrots in there. There was a box of food provided just outside the aviary that visitors could feed the parrots with, and they were very friendly, landing and people and coming up for food, and one Sun Conure landed on my shouldered and refused to go away! Something that I thought was particularly interesting in this aviary was that it contained a hybrid between a Corella and a Galah that was rather striking in appearance.

After I spent a while watching the birds in that aviary, I exited to a further section with birds, again mostly parrots, though there were some finches and quails as well. These aviaries followed a similar design to the others being typical mesh aviaries, though easily large enough for the smaller species held in this section. There was also another Quokka enclosure here, with the aviaries being arranged around that enclosure.

I then continued to the area where some of the larger mammals were held. First were enclosures for both Common and Southern-hairy Nosed Wombat, and Short-beaked Echidna. Both species of wombats were extremely visible, and the common was just sitting there right next to the glass. The enclosures all seemed fairly good, nothing too special, though due to the recent rain, the wombat enclosures in particular were extremely muddy. The deer and alpaca enclosure mentioned above stretched down along the side of the zoo up to around here. Further along the path, on one side was a row of Tasmanian Devil enclosures, and on the other was The Billabong, a small enclosed lake exhibit. This was the first of two areas with Tasmanian Devils and there were several similar looking enclosures in a row, each with some logs and wood in the middle and most being quite small and holding a single devil. These were probably the smallest Tasmanian Devil enclosures I have seen, though there doesn’t seem to be space in the zoo to build larger ones, and the zoo has quite a lot of success with breeding their devils.

Opposite these enclosures was The Billabong which consists of a lake surrounded by a large area of land that is enclosed, with viewing into this exhibit from all around this end of the zoo.

I would imagine the land area is usually bigger than it was when I saw it, because with the aforementioned recent rain, I suspect the water level had risen significantly, however there was still a very substantial area of land. The species held here included some native waterfowl, as well as exotic Chinese Goose and Sebastopol Goose and there were also Emus, Swamp Wallabies, and Red-necked Wallabies. Here I noticed a few stray Emu eggs lying around, and later I saw an Emu that was sitting on a clutch of at least a dozen eggs. On the whole, I liked this particular exhibit very much, with lots of trees making it a very nice shady area, however I wasn’t a fan of the number of domestic geese or the fact that there was lots of waterfowl that was, I assume, either clipped or pinioned. I then passed two further mammal enclosures, the first being quite a large enclosure for Dingoes, at least it was signed (or more accurately numbered) for Dingoes, as the animals themselves were nowhere to be seen, but it looked to be a fairly good enclosure. And there was also slightly odd shaped and odd looking netted enclosure for Woylies (Brush-tailed Bettong).

Next I came up to the zoo’s bird of prey section which consists of seven aviaries arranged around a circular shape, in a similar way to parrot aviaries earlier, as well as a separate predatory birds aviary. Each bird of prey aviary was a bit on the small side to be honest, though they are only small species held, and they were five species of owls as well as Australian Kestrels. The predatory birds aviary was quite a bit larger, and held here were Laughing Kookaburras, Bush-stone Curlew, Boobook Owl, and a Grey Butcherbird. This predatory bird enclosure adjoined The Billabong as well as a paddock for Red Kangaroos.

Next along from the birds of prey was quite a large circular aviary that was lushly planted and held Red-tailed Black-cockatoo, Eclectus Parrot, and Rufous Bettong. This was the only aviary that I thought was anything special, not to say that the others were bad necessarily, but they were just pretty standard things. After that aviary, was the final row of enclosures at the zoo holding a few more mammals. Firstly was quite a big Eastern Quoll enclosure on one side of the path, and that brought the total number of Quoll species at this collection up to three with the Northern and Spotted-tail Quolls in the first row of small mammal enclosures. Opposite the Eastern Quoll enclosure was a reasonably large enclosure for two Bengal Cats. These seemed to behave no differently to a domestic cats, coming up the mesh and purring. Obviously a bit of an odd thing to have in a zoo, but I don’t see it as being hugely different to having domestic farm animals or rabbits or anything like that, and I wouldn’t say having them was drastically different to displaying Dingoes. Not something I would particularly choose to have in a zoo, but I don’t see them as any different to domestics in a petting zoo or childrens' farm.

I then came up to a large walkthrough aviary that seemed to be the same shape, size, and design as the walkthrough aviary earlier. This time though, there were no birds in it, but Tasmanian Devils instead.

There were five separate devil enclosures, and the animals held there were the breeding devils. These enclosures seemed to be larger than the ones in the other row of devil enclosures which were for the single individuals, and there was nice planting, piles of wood, and things like that. So this was quite an attractive row of enclosures for the devils, though it seemed a shame to me to not utilise the huge aviary fully since it was completely netted over and big enough to be another large walkthrough aviary.

After exiting this Tasmanian Devil breeding area, I passed a little picnic lawn and was back to the entrance area where I started from. Having now seen everything in the zoo, I went back to have another look at a few interesting things again before leaving the zoo and meeting up again with my family to have a meal in a nearby restaurant overlooking the river.

After lunch, we headed back to Perth, however on the way we passed the turnoff for Serpentine National Park and decided spontaneously to stop on the. It was actually getting quite late by then, and we only had an hour and a half before the gates to the car park were locked for the night and we had to be out before then. All around the car park at Serpentine were loads of Western Grey Kangaroos as well as various common birds like magpies and things. There were also quite a few Red-capped Parrots and Red-tailed Black-cockatoos around. Because we didn’t have a huge amount of time and didn’t want to risk getting locked into the park overnight, we just did a walk along a trail until we were halfway through our time, and then turned around and headed back. The landscape at Serpentine is very nice with waterfalls, rocky hills, and other interesting terrain. I didn’t see any wildlife around that I hadn’t already, but it was nice to visit and I did see interesting things like Golden Whistlers, Grey Shrike-thrushes, and stuff like that

We headed out of the national park about fifteen minutes before the gates closed, and as we were waiting at the corner in the car for a gap in the traffic to turn onto the main road, I noticed that at the edge of a roadside field just on the edge of the trees was a Western Brush-wallaby sitting there just about visible. That was certainly a welcome surprise sighting!

New bird seen:

Wedge-tailed Eagle

New mammal:

Western Brush-wallaby

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