About 25km outside Kota Kinabalu is the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park. The 280 acre site is home to a wide range of tropical animals such as elephants, deer, leopards, tigers and bears. In all it contains over a hundred different species of mammals and birds.
Part of the site is a covered aviary where birds have enough room to fly and hop about and generally ignore visitors. The park was pretty deserted when we visited but on entering the aviary we were greeted by someone saying ‘Ni-hao’. Looking around we still seemed to be alone but the same voice offered a quieter ‘Hello!’ until we finally noticed a Mynah bird landed looking down at us expectantly…
In the early afternoon the keepers do the rounds feeding the animals, which provides a great opportunity to see them close up.
The tiger feeding is probably the most interesting – the food has to be sent across the enclosure on a pulley system to force the tiger to run and jump for it. The orang-utans don’t move from their perch, but wait for the keeper to throw bread and fruit, then deftly pluck it out of the air. The Malaysian Sun Bear just sits and waits to be fed, whilst the proboscis monkeys scream and fight each other over the abundant offerings.
