I know Blackpool had 4 youngsters over 7 months ago...maybe a male from them and Chester have 7 female's!
Great news for one of our Favourite collections. You never know what you will find on a visit and it is always quiet (probably a bad thing for them) We visit every year and love the place.
Many collections will quarantine all new arrivals even if they are from another UK collection in case they are sick or carrying disease. If they were put straight into a mixed exibit then they could potentially pass any disease onto exsisting animals within the park
The 3 otters came from Dresden and Emmen Zoo and their new home will be completed in the summer. (From newsletter)
Hamerton Zoo have seen the arrival of a pair of Grant's Zebra from Copenhagen Zoo. The pair are both around a year old, and arrived on 18th May. The park's staff are getting to know them, in the hope they'll soon be tame enough to have vet checks and foot trimming carried out. The pair are currently off show, but will eventually be going in a paddock by the zoo's car park. Other arrivals at Hamerton include two young American Tree Porcupines and two litters of Corsac foxes were born in April.
Two large aviaries are being constructed near the reptile house, which will hold Steller's sea eagles, marabou storks, and vultures. The anteater enclosure looks complete although I didn't see the anteaters themselves. Within it there is a house for Prevost's squirrels, with an extended wire walkway over the nearby aviaries for them to run though.
I feel like a bad zoochatter now because I can't remember exactly (in my defence it was in the middle of a 7-zoo trip). The aviaries are much larger than anything already at Hamerton. The sign on them definitely mentioned Steller's (which are not currently in the collection) and marabou (which are). I'm pretty sure the other two species were vultures, one was almost certainly Rüppell's, and another one which I think was a new species, but I may be wrong.
You can make amends by letting us know which 7 zoos you visited and what were your general impressions (one line reviews sufficient)
Ok here goes. Trip was East Anglia with a visit to Dudley at the beginning. Apart from Dudley and Banham I hadn’t been to these places before. Dudley: first visit in 20 years. Didn’t seem that different from what I remember. The chimpanzee paddock is very impressive. I’m all for heritage but I do have difficulty seeing the value of the Tecton stuff. In particular the guanaco paddock looked quite nasty with the derelict building overhanging it, and the old bird house was pretty ugly too. Saw the baby orang utan, and white lipped peccaries which aren’t too common. I wasn’t sure why the Sulawesi macaques had been moved from a spacious hillside paddock to much more cramped conditions in a new house. The setting of the zoo remains unique as I remember it. Hamerton: I really liked this place. If I had my own zoo it would probably be something like this. Lots of unusual species, some expansion going on which is always nice to see. Saw my first oncilla, although I think I would have taken them for margays if they hadn’t been labelled. Very busy with school groups. One gripe: it doesn’t open until 10:30 which meant I didn’t have time to linger. You can easily get around in 90 minutes, but I prefer to keep doubling back to catch the no-shows. Linton: another small collection with a few rarities, eg crowned lemur, Hartmann’s zebra. They are proud of breeding ground hornbills but they have only done it once 16 years ago according to the keeper. To be honest I thought it was nothing special. Banham: very good collection and grounds which reminded me of Cotswold WP. I last went about 15 years ago and quite a lot had changed. Many excellent exhibits esp big cats, colobus. Large new giraffe house although I thought the paddock could be a bit bigger (although it is about 4 times the size of Dudley’s). The prairie dog enclosure is great being a field of about ?5acres with 500 prairie dogs and a few sika. Lemur walkthrough and lorikeet house are in construction. Africa Alive (I’m sorry I just can’t bring myself to use the exclamation mark): this place was much better than I expected. I like the layout and thought the balance of the collection was just right. Many species of lemur, bat-eared fox, addax, blesbok, Somali wild ass. New baby yellow mongoose. One thing about Banham/AA is that they don’t offer a discount if you go to both (you can get three attractions for the price of two if you include their dinosaur park, but I wasn’t interested in that). The same thing applies to Thrigby/Amazona. This means you pay almost £30 which they couldn’t ask for if the two were on one site. Thrigby: Another small place with several unusual species – Owston’s palm civet, golden cat, Blyth’s hornbill. I saw my first zoo mugger although I saw them in the wild last year. An American alligator in an outside pen on a warm day was a good sight, very unusual (if not unique) in this country. I thought some of the cages were a bit on the small side. The oriental lake walk was very nicely done. Amazona/Cromer: smallest of the places on this trip. Many of the enclosures were flatpacked and to be honest it shows. The theme is neotropical, but despite the huge possibilities of that region there are mostly the usual suspects: marmosets, Brazilian tapirs, capybaras, maras, spider monkeys, cages full of ex-pet parrots; jaguars and pumas. Blue-throated piping guans and northern helmeted currassows were good to see.
Thanks for that Pygathrix, I always like to hear seasoned visitors' opinions on collections (especially first time visits). You did better than some, I know a few people (myself included) that struggle with the A. A. name and still refer to it as "Suffolk (Wildlife Park)".
Three more female Zebra's have arrived to join the existing pair, Eske came from Emmen as well as Shanira and Marlies who came from Rhenen.
