Santa Barbara Zoo

We have wanted to go to the Santa Barbara Zoo for some time. We had intended to go back in July but ended up spending that chilly day in Lompoc instead. One month later, on August 20, we did finally get down to the zoo.

It was not the most amazing zoo ever, but it was pretty close. There was one section devoted to animals that live in or near water. There were poison dart frogs, piranhas, turtles, alligators, other fish, even a sloth hanging out in the branches above the turtle pond! The neat thing about the exhibit was that they were not in a building as is typical for tanks; they were set in the walls of an open-air tunnel. It was a little bit like being in a cave, except for the aquarium tanks lining the walls. At the end of the tunnel you could go left to the Elephants and lemurs or right toward the penguins. The whole zoo in under a bit of renovation at the moment, so the penguins were elsewhere.

We went toward the lemurs. They are frequently our favorite. They had two large groups on display. There were both ring-tail and black-and-white ruffed. At the Louisville Zoo there are only two black-and-white ruffed lemurs and they are both crotchety and chastised by the other lemurs. Here there were about a dozen and they all seemed to be getting on quite well with each other. There was even a baby lemur! Well, it was a young lemur, actually. It was born in April so that makes it no longer a baby by lemur standards.
In the Wings of Asia aviary we saw Mandarin ducks, a bird called a Palawan peacock-pheasant and one of the world’s largest pigeons: the western crowned pigeon. They are seriously large – as large as a turkey! They have this amazing plumage on their heads. When we saw them they were obsessively picking at their breasts. They would bend their heads over, nip at their feathers and then look up again. They did this over and over again in very quick, jerky movements. The bleeding heart pigeon is also an amazing bird. Matt keeps saying we should have our own aviary someday and fill it with rare and exotic pigeons.

On the way back toward the elephants we passed the gibbons. They are very agile and they would run along the ground with their arms held up waiting for a branch to grab hold of. When they got they one they tucked their legs up and transitioned to swinging smoothly. It really stunning to watch. We took some video of it but rather then post our video, here’s one by someone else. It’s not from Santa Barbara, but shows about the same range of behaviors that we saw.

Next we saw the elephants. We also saw a giant anteater. And the lion pen was next. It was constructed in such a way that we got right up on the lions. There was a male and a female and when we first arrived the male was sitting right next to the glass sort of leering at the crowd. He started calling out for the she-lion who was circling the large faux rock in the pen. Then he went and they followed each other around the rock for a while. What does this behavior signify? The zoo also has giraffes and gorillas, but it was nearing the end of the day by then and those animals weren’t really engaged in any interesting behaviors. It was close to time for the zoo to close anyway so we headed back to the exit.
We were supposed to have done more than just go to the zoo but we had spent so much time looking at all the animals that just about all the places we were interested in going were closed. We just went to supper instead. We has looked up a couple restaurants that specialize in veggie food and the one we chose to go to was called Sojourner Café. It had good food. We got a huge plate of nachos to share. Matt loves nachos and might have gotten them anyway but they happened to sound good to Maya too so we ordered one to share and each got a little extra something as well. The nachos were great and Maya liked her vegetable gumbo, but Matt’s Mexican cornbread was nothing special.

Across the street from the restaurant is El Presidio Real de Santa Bárbara. It was the headquarters of the Spanish military in the area back in the days of the missions. It was closed already by the time we were there but maybe we’ll be back…