My parents highly recommended a visit to the Bird Park in Brasil, which is a short distance from the falls. We had totally overlooked this as our guide book didn’t have much to say about; should have taken the Lonely Planet book after all. I guess that call home to say “hi” came at a really good time. Because we had booked the full day tour on the Brasil side of the falls, we were unable to fit in a visit to the bird park at the same time. So we decided we would go first thing in the morning on the day heading into Argentina. Boy are we ever glad we did. The park was not too busy and the birds were just finished being fed. The bird park is situated in 5 hectares of native subtropical forest. There are over 800 birds, both indigenous and from other countries. Some of the birds are encaged, however, there are also parts where you walk through a larger enclosure where the birds fly more freely. One enclosure housed a variety of parrots, which got kicks out of dive-bombing the tourists trying to take pictures. Ziad got clipped by the wing of one parrot as he was filming some video. There were lots of multi-coloured brilliant red, yellow, green and blue parrots. We got to see flamingos and I was fascinated at their ability to balance on just one leg while sleeping; their legs are so thin! We saw a gorgeous blue-jay, a bunch of toucans which Ziad got extremely excited about. He just wanted to take pictures and pictures of the toucans; we have about 20 pictures with toucans in them. The park also houses owls, eagles, a king vulture, hummingbirds and a bunch of other bird species that I did not recognize. There are also some not so exciting reptiles like an anaconda, boa constrictor and an alligator. It took us just over an hour to tour the park and was well worth it. If you like nature and the songs of birds, this is a place to visit.
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