This Place is For the Birds

The thing about Niagra Falls, CAN is that it's touristy. Meaning, they have a lot of those fliers for things to do. One that caught Deanna's eye was Bird Kingdom. Once she showed me the flier I was hooked. An Aviary with exotic birds. I love birds. Even more so I like brightly colored birds.

It was raining outside and was supposed to rain all day...remnants of that storm that gave Buffalo all of that snow. We walked the 1.1 miles to the Aviary anyway.

As you go in there is a very small room as far as aviaries go. I'd say just a little bigger than your standard living room. There were many little birds here flitting about. I thought, "ok, I was expecting more, but these are indeed birds." and started taking pictures. As we were taking pics one of the workers said they recommend seeing the full facility before taking too many pictures. Ah HA! There's more!

Next was the nocturnal room. No flash photography allowed. There were some bats, some owls, some lizards (they aren't birds), Snakes (also not birds) and a couple small alligators (no bird-like features here either).

From here we walked out into the main aviary...THIS part was more like it.

There were bigger, more exotic birds in this area, and more room for them to get around. In one corner there was a caged area that you could enter. You had to use anti-bacterial stuff on your hands, and then you could enter.

As an added bonus, you could pay $2 to buy a little cup of nectar that would attract the macaws in the room over to you.

Deanna and I both did this. The most dangerous part about it was that these birds were crapping nectar all the time.

It was great. After that we walked back through heavier rain to get back to the hotel. We were soaked, and I only had one pair of pants with me, the rest of my clothes was in the car which had been valet parked. So, before we headed down to the casino I spent about 30 minutes ironing my pants until they were dryish.

The Casino was ok. The smallest amount you could get from the ATM was $100. I went to my Let It Ride table and won on my first hand. I never really won big, but I won enough times to keep me above my original amount. I had been playing for awhile and decided to stop when I didn't have enough to bet for a full round ($30) + my initial $100. So, when I got to $125 I left. I put that $25 into a video poker game and lost that, but I walked away with my initial $100 so it's like I didn't spend anything!

For more bird pics, check out my photo blog (Daily Photo under the Links to the right).