Today we went to the Giant Tortoise Breeding Center to see the baby tortoises.
They have really long necks.
There was one pen that had a clutch from this month! They were still really small.
This guy hasn’t even got eating down yet.
That’s it, use your foot!
Eating is hard work. Time to rest in the shade.
Cut it out, Yurtle!
Yurtle the tortoise doesn’t even rhyme!
We also saw some of the really big ones. There was no one else around when we were there so we could sit and hear all the munching of the babies and the adults.
They have long necks too. 
They also had big feet.
And big toenails.
This is an Espanola tortoise brought in from the San Diego Zoo. There were only 2 other males of his kind when they brought him in, so the breeding program was in trouble. But he is quite the lady’s man and is now the father of 80% of his subspecies.
There were also pens for the iguanas.
We saw lots of lava lizards while wandering around.
And lots of weird plants. This one looks like a fern, but it has flowers.
This is another cactus flower.
This is the inside of a dead cactus.
There was also a wasp that followed us around. Here is an old nest:
And here he is trying to camouflage on the backpack.
This is a spider.
The birds are still quite relaxed around people. This is a mockingbird that was squawking at Matt while he was taking Kerri’s picture.
Here is a cactus finch on the ground.
And here is a ground finch on a cactus.
He flew down off of his flower to investigate us.
It kept hopping closer and closer, with pollen still all over it’s nose. Then it pecked Kerri’s toe. Hard! It moved away after Kerri jumped back. Matt was not sure what she expected but assumed a bird hops over you are likely to get pecked.
Those tortoises are so cute!