In mid-January, Helen and I visited our daughter and her partner in Dubai. January was mid-winter in Dubai so the day temperatures were not too hot and the evenings were very pleasant. Dubai has first world infrastructure and there is an amazing variety of things to see and do in this desert locale. It offers snow skiing slopes to rainforests and everything in between. Obviously all of these attractions are in buildings. One of the many places we visited in Dubai was the Green Planet. This is an indoor multi-story biodome that recreates a tropical forest microcosm exhibiting considerable diversity of over 3 200 plants and animals. The light, humidity and temperature are controlled to mimic conditions in the rainforest. This biodome has four levels which enable visitors to see different fauna and flora at different levels of the rainforest. Its focus is on conservation and education. This post shows some of the birds and animals we saw in the Green Planet.

“New ideas that fly in the face of conventional wisdom of the day are always greeted with doubt and scorn, even fear.” ~ John C. Bogle

Ross’ turaco is a medium-sized bird, with a long tail and broad, round wings. It has spectacular purple-blue plumage with a yellow bill and wide yellow eyering and a fluffy red crest. It shows large crimson wing patches on its primary and secondary wing feathers in flight. Turacos have three toes on each foot that point forward, while the fourth toe can be rotated forward or backwards as required. This species prefers forests and wooded valley habitats.

Turacos are the only birds to possess true red and green colours. The turaco’s red pigment (turacin) and green pigment (turacoverdin) both contain copper. The beautiful red crest is raised when this species is excited. This species has an extremely large range across Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. These birds feed primarily on plants and fruit, but will occasionally eat insects.

A Hyacinth macaw is native to central and eastern South America. With a length (from the top of its head to the tip of its long pointed tail) of about one metre and is longer than any other species of parrot. It is the largest macaw and the largest flying parrot species. The tail is long and pointed and its feathers are entirely blue. The ring around the parrot’s eyes and the area just underneath the beak are a vibrant yellow. The Hyacinth macaw mostly nests in Manduvi trees, which rely on the toco toucan for 83.3% of the tree’s distribution of seeds. The toco toucan also feeds on around 53% of the Hyacinth macaw’s offspring and eggs

The Blue and Yellow macaw inhabits forest (especially varzea – a seasonal floodplain forest, and in open sections of terra firma or unflooded forest), woodland and savannah of tropical Central and South America, as well as the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean. The plumage of this species is vivid with bright aqua blue feathers on its upper parts except for the head, which is lime coloured. The under parts are a rich deep yellow/light orange. Its beak is black, as are the feathers under its chin. Its feet are of a grey colour, and talons are black. This species has white skin on its face, with only small black feathers which form a striped pattern around the eyes. The irises are pale light yellow.

“Feathers fall; soft as a song, light as morning dreams.” ~ Eirene Evripidou

Green or Guinea turaco has an extremely large range and can be found in Western Africa from Senegal to Central African Republic, and as far south as Angola. The plumage on its chest, throat, neck and head and part way down its back is a brilliant green. The lower part of its back and its belly are blue. Its wings are a dark purplish colour. Its crimson red primary and secondary wings feathers are only fully evident in flight. It has a red eyering with a white patch in front of its eye reaching to its maxilla. It beak is small and pink in colour.

There are three other African turaco which look similar by virtue of their green plumage and red eyering such as Buffon’s, Livingstons, and Schalow’s turaco, but these species all have different arrangements of white lines in front and around their eyes.

“Turaco are beautiful to behold but show off their true colours when they take to flight.” ~ Mike Haworth

A Laughing kookaburra, one of four species of kookaburra which are terrestrial tree kingfishers. This species has a whitish head and a brown eye-stripe. Its upperparts are mostly dark brown but there is a mottled light-blue patch on the wing coverts. The underparts are cream-white and its tail is barred with rufous and black. The Laughing kookaburra is native to eastern mainland Australia, but has also been introduced to parts of New Zealand, Tasmania, and Western Australia. This species is a perch hunter feeding on lizards, insects, worms, snakes, and mice.

There is a large genus of glossy starlings all of which occur in Africa south of the Sahara. They are so named because of their glossy blue and green upperparts. The Cape and Blue-eared glossy starlings have a yellow eye while the Burchell’s and Long tailed starlings have dark eyes.

A juvenile Green iguana. The green iguana ranges over a large geographic area. It is native from southern Brazil and Paraguay to as far north as Mexico. The green (or common) iguana is an arboreal and diurnal lizard found in tropical and subtropical regions. Living in warm and humid environments, iguanas spend a lot of their time climbing and then warming themselves on tree branches. Although iguanas cannot change their colours like a chameleon, they become darker when they are cold to absorb heat from the sun. Young iguanas are pale green with black rings on their tail and tend to spend more time on the ground. As they mature they climb more, and they change to an earthier colour. This species can growth to 1.7 metres or 5.6 foot in length.

“While it is relatively easy to recognize the perennial grasses and seed-eating sparrows as characteristic of meadows, the ecosystems exist in their fullest sense underground. What we see aboveground is only the outer margin of an ecosystem that explodes in intricacy and life below.” ~ Amy Seidl

The Blue-and-yellow macaw uses its powerful beak for breaking nutshells, and for climbing up and hanging from trees. As well as nuts, it will also feed on seeds, fruits, vegetable matter, bark and leaves, as well as insects, snails and small animals. This species can live for 35 years in the wild.

“It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.” ~ Aesop

A Palm cockatoo, also called the Great Black cockatoo. There are four sub species of black cockatoo in Australia. This species hide away high in the gum trees, feeding on delicious gumnuts, cawing loudly and distinctly. It is a distinctive bird with a large crest and has one of the largest beaks of any parrot (only the Hyacinth macaw’s is larger). This powerful beak enables Palm cockatoos to eat very hard nuts and seeds, and also enables males to break off thick (about 1 inch) sticks from live trees to use for a drumming display. The beak is unusual, as the lower and upper mandibles do not meet for much of its length, allowing the tongue to hold a nut against the top mandible while the lower mandible works to open it. The Palm cockatoo also has a distinctive red cheek patch that changes colour when the bird is alarmed or excited. The Palm cockatoo is found in rainforests and woodlands of New Guinea and Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia.

“Nature is the purest portal to inner-peace.” ~ Angie Weiland Crosby

Sloths—the sluggish tree-dwellers of Central and South America—spend their lives in the tropical rain forests. They move through the canopy at a rate of about 40 metres per day, feeding on leaves, twigs and buds. Sloths have an exceptionally low metabolic rate and spend 15 to 20 hours per day sleeping. There are two different types of sloths, two-toed and three-toed, and six species. This was a Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth. A sloth’s most common predators are jaguars and Harpy eagles.

“Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not to suffer.” ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

A Ring-tailed lemur. Ring-tailed lemurs are named for the 13 alternating black and white bands that colour their tails. Ring-tailed lemurs live in south western Madagascar, in arid, open areas and forests. Unlike most other lemurs, ringtails spend 40 percent of their time on the ground, moving quadrupedally along the forest floor. The ring-tailed lemur habitat is shrinking at an alarming rate. Satellite images suggest that Ring-tailed lemur habitat is vanishing at an even greater rate than forest habitat in other parts of Madagascar.

A Toco toucan. It is the largest species of toucan and has a distinctive appearance, with a black body, a white throat, chest and upper tail-coverts, and red under tail-coverts. Its most conspicuous feature is its massive beak, which is yellow-orange with a black base and large black tip on its maxilla. Toco toucans mainly feed on fleshy fruits, but also supplement their diets with insects, eggs, and nestlings of other birds. It is endemic to South America, where it has a wide distribution from the Guyana to northern Argentina and Uruguay.

A Nicobar pigeon. This spectacular ground-dwelling pigeon has long, extravagant plumes trailing down from the neck. It inhabits small, densely forested offshore islands from the Indian Andamans to the Solomons and New Guinea. Its head is grey, like the upper neck plumage, which turns into green and copper hackles. The tail is very short and pure white. The rest of its plumage is metallic green. The cere on its dark bill forms a small blackish knob; the strong legs and feet are dull red.

The Silver pheasant is a species of pheasant found in forests, mainly in mountains, of mainland Southeast Asia and eastern and southern China. There are 15 sub species of the Silver pheasant. This species is omnivorous foraging on everything from seeds and plants to insects and worms. Pheasants spend almost their entire life on the ground, and are rarely seen in trees.

Victoria crowned pigeon. This is a large blue-grey pigeon with a decorative and elegant lace-like crest. Its breast is maroon and its eyes are red. This species is as large as an adult female turkey. This bird is the largest living pigeon and the closest remaining relative to the extinct Dodo bird. It was named in honour of Queen Victoria for its flashy blue crown of intricate lace-like patterns and its regal poise. This ground-dwelling species of pigeon is wild in New Guinea and forages on the forest floor for fallen fruit. It is one of four species of ground-dwelling pigeons in New Guinea.

This was just a few of the birds and animals I could take images of when there was enough light and no people in the background.

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” ~ Earl Nightingale

The concept of a biodome is intriguing. It is a self-contained, self-sustaining, human-made environment. One way to think of it is as an ecosystem built by people. Inside, you might find any number of life forms, including plants, animals, fungi, and more. The biodome enables biologists and ecologist to simulate select ecosystems, such as the rainforest in the Green Planet. Three other major biodomes are in Montreal in Canada, the Burger’s Zoo in the Netherlands and the Eden Project in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. On the one side, a biodome enables the public to be immersed in a particular ecosystem getting to see its flora and fauna up close. It also has scientific value enabling scientists the ability to study species up close over an extended period.

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its interconnectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike