That still doesn't explain why the mousebirds in the photo looked like juvenile, unless that is an old picture.
just to clarify here, I'm pretty sure the zoo had Mousebird chicks relatively recently, as there were six Mousebird's on exhibit when I visited today instead of the two I saw in 2021. They looked pretty young-ish, but I didn't really pay that much attention to how they looked. Although it's likely they were born more recently than not, there is at least a two-year timeframe here so who knows.
According to a volunteer that is also a friend of my family, zookeepers were recently surprised to find an unspecified amount of Cabot's tragopan chicks in one of their nests.
Yeah, I forgot to mention that in my last post. I believe there were about three or four, although I’m not 100% sure.
Funds are being raised to add a new sub-exhibit of the North America. The plans entail a little cabin with views into the old hoofstock yard, which will be home to caribou. Wild caribou seems plausible given the context. An announcement can be found on the Lake Superior Zoo Facebook page with a post from November 16.
Excelent to hear those old hoof stock yards are finally being filled after all these years! I do really hope it’s Woodland Caribou and not just domestic reindeer considering their rarity in the country and the fact that Minnesota just went out of the species.
Another thing I'm hoping is that the two yards won't be combined. Père David's deer were a great part of the collection all those years ago.
From what I saw in June only the former Père David’s Deer exhibit was being worked on while the former White-Tailed Deer exhibit was still overgrown. If Père David’s Deer were to return (which seems unlikely at the moment), I’d rather they place them somewhere closer to the other Asian exhibits rather than in the middle of the North American section.
On December 12th, the zoo announced they were raising funds to acquire a (1.0) red panda in 2024. Lake Superior Zoo
The zoo now has six Central Chinese gorals with the birth of a female called Wonton to mother Tina and father Mac nearly a year ago. I'm always very happy about goral births!
Recently, I was looking over the master plan for the zoo, and I was curious about how the 5th phase was going to be executed. Were they renovating the Australia exhibit to house more Australian animals? I was unsure if they planned on doing that, or if they planned to turn the area surrounding that exhibit into the unoriginally-named "Raptor Ridge" exhibit in there.
From what I understand, The Kangaroos and Wallabies are supposed to be phased out, and and at least part of their former exhibit is to be turned into several raptor aviaries, while the Australia & Oceania building itself is to be renovated to house Australian animals.
That's good. Removing the Australia portion of the zoo would be a major loss for the facility's diversity. Surely they will need some sort of mammal to be the "star" of the building. I wonder what they would pick? Doing something like tree-kangaroos, wombats, or echidnas could be exciting and unique.
