LaughingDove’s Trip Through Europe – Summer 2015

I'll second Pertinax, very good reports and photographs.

Enjoy the rest of your trip and I look forwards to reading more....

 

On the 3rd of August (yesterday) I went down to Sandwich and while the rest of my family did other things, I visited the Rare Species Conservation Centre and Wingham Wildlife Park. The two zoos are only 6 miles apart and I had no problem fitting both in, despite the fact that I didn’t get to RSCC (which I did first) until about 11. I have uploaded pictures of both places to their galleries: Rare Species Conservation Centre Gallery and Wingham Wildlife Park Gallery

Rare Species Conservation Centre

I spent just under three hours at the Rare Species Conservation Centre and saw two of the shows/feedings – namely the Palawan Binturong Meet and Greet and the Sun Bear Feeding and Talk.

Although several particularly unusual species are off-show, the collection is full to the brim with rarities and is a must visit for anyone interested in rarer species – hence the name – however there are a fair few species that act as main attractions for those who don’t appreciated a barely visible ball of fluff that you can just about make out as a Fanaloka. These were Sun Bears, Malayan Tigers, Red-ruffed Lemurs (the only species that I thought was boring) the most active and visible Clouded Leopard that I have ever seen, Smooth-coated and Giant otters. Although these species are unusual and rare, they also provide the appeal for the average zoo visitor.

Overall, I thought the quality of enclosures was very good, though there were a few enclosures that I thought were a bit small - most notably the very small Hyacinth Macaw enclosure. In terms of the general feel and landscaping of the zoo though, I thought it was very good overall. I thought the first half that you see was fantastic, that being the indoor building and the area where the overhead walkway is. The planting was very nice and I liked the design and the look of the exhibits which I thought were fantastic. These are views of the indoor area:





And this is the outdoor area that you see when you first come out of the indoor area:



You then go down this pathway:


And come out to a larger area of the zoo which is more open lawn with the enclosures for the Single-wattled Cassowary, Giant Otter, Malayan Tiger, Maned Wolves and Caribbean Flamingo (I neglected to take a picture showing an overview of this whole area). This is an open lawn with some nice planting with nice enclosures around it though there was a lot of construction going on and several half-finished bits which took away from the overall feel, though development is of course good, and once the construction is finished, this area will match the high standards of the rest of the zoo.

A couple of other points: As far as I could tell, the raised walkway was only accessible at the Sun Bear feeding once per day; I thought this was rather odd. And the viewing for some of the animals was very difficult such as the Fanaloka and the Owston’s Palm Civets. Though to look at it positively, it’s better than either species being off-show. The main complaint I have though is the signage. The quality of the signs themselves was good but many of the enclosures had a different species in them to the signs and half the enclosures seemed to be signed for binturongs with all sorts of other things in them (Rusty-spotted Cats, Hyacinth Macaws and Red-ruffed Lemurs were all signed for Binturongs). There were also lots of enclosures that were unsigned including Cassowaries, Maned Wolves, Giant Otters etc. and I overheard some people say that the zoo could really do with more signs – and I agree.

I thought the RSCC was fantastic overall, I really enjoyed my visit and I left with a very good impression of the whole place .

 

Whereabouts are the hyacinth macaws living?

 

Roughly opposite the Sun Bear indoor area.

 

Brilliant walkthroughs LD, I'm enjoying following your trip. You're also covering a few interesting collections I've yet to visit.
Glad you're making it to more zoos than expected

 

Thanks

Yes, I'm pleased with the number of zoos that I have managed to visit overall.

Managed to fit in quite a few that were near to places that the rest of my family wanted to visit.

 

Wingham Wildlife Park

I visited Wingham Wildlife Park on the Afternoon of the 3rd of August after RSCC earlier in the day and I spent about three hours there. My overall impression of the place wasn’t as positive as my impression of RSCC. I didn’t think that Wingham was bad necessarily, but I felt the place was a bit too typical and I didn’t really think “Wow, that’s cool” in terms of the exhibits as much as I would have liked.

The collection was comprised of quite a few star species, these being lions, tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, mountain lions, wolves, lots of lemurs and various other primates, crocodiles, meerkats, otters tapirs, wallabies etc. There were also a fair few more unusual species though such as a few unusual birds, Spix’s Night Monkeys, Little Red Flying Foxes, Genets etc. But all of these were held in rather boring enclosures, with lots of standard paddocks and mesh cages and things that you can see in lots of other zoos. There were a few nicer bits – namely the large lake with an island for mandrills, the walkthrough flamingo area and the tropical house, but the majority of the zoo was pretty standard. I think the zoo was good for its main target of younger families though because there were lots of play areas etc. but it could have been better overall with things as simple as some more natural climbing opportunities for the primates or even a few trees or plants and water features in many of the enclosures.

For example, this is the tiger enclosure


And just with a few trees it would look so much more interesting, and the same was true with many other enclosures such as this one for Jaguars:



It’s got plenty of climbing opportunities and is fine, but could look much better in the way that the walkthrough flamingo enclosure does which was very natural looking and nicely planted:



Or the tropical house which was also nicely planted:



And the nice lake with waterfowl, a Mandrill island and a Tapir area:



(See the gallery Wingham Wildlife Park Gallery for some more enclosure pictures)

Overall I didn’t like Wingham as much I could have. It was definitely worth visiting though, even if just for the few particularly unusual species and the one or two nice exhibits. It’s not a bad zoo in my opinion, just not as good as it could be and it fell a little short of my expectations after the huge signs saying it has “more species than any other Kent zoo” and the good first impression from the entrance area.

 

Really enjoying your reviews LD .

Wingham is growing fast , though it does not sound in a particularly exciting way ! I visited a few years ago when the current owners had not long taken it over , the collection was then far smaller .

Regarding the palm civets you saw at RSCC . They have a breeding group of Sumatran banded palm civets - I wonder if some of these are now on show , or whether they have now added Owston's palm civet . I think they had at least one Owston's in the past but do not list them on their website .

 

The civets were signed as Owston's Civets and those were the only ones on-show.
However I wouldn't trust the signage to be correct necessarily.

 

Is that because with all the combined totals of their many smaller species, they really do have more species than e.g. Howletts or PL, or is it because the latter don't refer to themselves as 'Zoos?

 

I was at RSCC on Thursday, and from what I gather the enclosure signed for Owston's palm civets actually houses a pair of Sri Lankan rusty-spotted cats, along with the other adult pair and two kittens in the tropical house.

 

I think they really do have more species but yes, that will be including many small species such as two dozen butterfly species, a dozen fish species, two dozen parrot species etc.

 

I didn't manage to spot anything in that enclosure so it could be as far as I know. But looking through the tiny viewing windows at the side, the enclosure did seem more suitable for something more arboreal.

 

Yesterday, I took the train down to London Zoo. This was my last UK zoo this summer because I am taking the channel tunnel for the return drive to Warsaw on Tuesday. If all goes to plan, I will be visiting two zoos on the drive back, those being Antwerp and Leipzig.

London Zoo

I have visited London Zoo five or six times before - most recently last December - so it wasn’t a new zoo for me, but I enjoyed my visit nonetheless. As usual, some of my pictures can be seen in the gallery: ZSL London Zoo Gallery

I quite like London Zoo; it receives a fair bit of criticism over wasting space and not having enough large animals but I don’t think it’s as bad as some people think. There is quite a bit of wasted space though, there is a large area in front of the restaurant and ‘Penguin beach’ that I think could do with and animal exhibit, and one could probably also fit some things in various areas of lawn, but I don’t think wasted space is such a huge problem. There is also some space by the sides of the canal, but having some natural vegetation there is a positive in my opinion. I do have one major criticism in terms of wasted space though – empty enclosures. This is particularly true with some of the smaller aviaries on the side of the canal with the Snowdon aviary and there is also a fair bit of wasted space around there.

In regards to not enough large species, I would completely disagree with that. For a zoo the size of London, they have quite a good balance in my opinion. There simply isn’t space for so many large species held in good enclosures and that is why there is Whipsnade for all the larger species. I would even go as far as saying that they have too many large species – the yards for Giraffe, Zebra and Okapi are a little on the small side and could possibly do with being enlarged to bring them up to the same standard as the rest of the zoo so that would necessitate getting rid of something.

And speaking of the standard of the enclosures, they are very good overall. Tiger Territory is the best tiger enclosure that I personally have ever seen and Penguin Beach is the second best penguin enclosure (after the one in Wroclaw zoo’s Afrykarium). I also really like Rainforest Life and Night Life and although I have heard that a lot of stuff was lost when Rainforest Life was built, I never saw any of it personally so I don’t feel the loss. There is also the issue of lots of boring ‘ABC animals’ such as Outback which is only Red Kangaroos, Emus and Bennett’s Wallabies and various other things with boring, common species but there are still a fair few oddities such as many of the birds in the Blackburn Pavilion and a few unusual species in Night Life etc. and although they *could* replace some of the boring animals with more unusual ones, it’s not like everything they have is just the usual ‘ABCs’.

From what I have heard, I think if I had seen London Zoo some time ago when they had lots more unusual species then I wouldn’t think so positively of the place, but because I haven’t, I’m just judging as it is rather than comparing it to how it has been and I think it is a fairly good zoo.

A couple of additional bits and pieces:

I thought the reptile collection was fantastic; however there were quite a few very heavily themed enclosures which I thought was excessively themed. I also liked how there were many ‘off show’ breeding areas visible through glass windows – those being for Endangered fish in the Aquarium, Endangered Amphibians in the Reptile house and Partula Snails in B.U.G.S – there were also signs explaining ZSL’s work with endangered species and conservation which I thought was great. Another particularly nice building was B.U.G.S (Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival) - which I think is a great name by the way – is an invertebrate house (including a nice spider walkthrough) but with various fish, reptiles, mammals and birds showing Biodiversity with lots of educational signage making for a very nice exhibit.

So overall I do like London Zoo. It could do with being bigger, but realistically that’s not going to happen so for what there is, I think everything is very well done.

 

I arrived back in Warsaw today after the return drive from the UK. On the way back we stopped in three places: Antwerp for two nights, Leipzig for two nights and a very short stop in Poznan for only one night just to break up the drive (there was no time to do anything (zoo or otherwise) in Poznan, but I visited visited both of Poznan's zoos a few months ago).

I will be posting pictures and writing reviews on Antwerp Zoo, Aquatopia Antwerp and Leipzig Zoo in the coming days because I will have quite a bit of time before I have to go back to School on the 1st of September.

In total on the drive from Warsaw to the UK I went approximately 1900 kilometres (roughly 1180 miles) over 5 driving days and on the way back was approximately 1700 kilometres (roughly 1050 miles) over only 3 driving days. Of course there were plenty of short trips while in the UK as well.

 

I left the UK on the 11th with a channel crossing around midday-ish before driving to Antwerp. The next day I visited Antwerp Zoo and because I had an hour left before it closed after finishing the zoo, I visited Aquatopia as well.

Antwerp Zoo

I visited the zoo on the 12th and pictures can be seen in the gallery ZOO Antwerpen Gallery as usual. I thought Antwerp Zoo was good generally; it had a similar feel to Artis Zoo in Amsterdam which I visited earlier in the trip due to both having the same sort of historical buildings and setting. The zoo was also located very centrally in Antwerp so some of the historical buildings in the city could be seen from inside the zoo such as this view of the Central Station taken from within the zoo looking over the bird house:



I liked the layout of the zoo which can be seen on the zoo map ZOO map | ZOO Antwerp (Note: the map makes the zoo seem smaller than it is, many of the smaller enclosures are not marked, and things such as the nocturnal house which is reasonably large is only marked with an Aardvark) and I thought the landscaping around the zoo in general was very nice, such as here:



However one criticism that I do have is that the area that you first view upon entering the zoo isn’t as impressive as it could be and is probably the least attractive looking area of the zoo in my opinion which I didn’t think gave a good first impression:




In terms of the enclosure quality and size, it was a little more variable. I thought it was fairly good in general, but there were some smaller enclosures that could have been better such as the Jaguar Enclosure which I thought was a bit on the smaller side:



Or the Indoor Penguin Enclosure for example:



But even saying those examples are bad is very nit-picky and they are perfectly acceptable, it's just that they could have been better.

(Split post because of number of pictures)

 

Antwerp Zoo Part 2

However having said that about some enclosures that could have been better, I thought the majority of enclosures were very good such as many very nicely done enclosures in the bird house such as this one for Goldie’s Lorikeets:



And the large and impressive butterfly house just to give a few examples:




There were a few interesting enclosure designs too such as the dark corridor in the bird house



Where there were no barriers for the bird enclosures but the only things stopping the birds escaping was that they wouldn’t fly into the dark

Antwerp Zoo also has several very unusual species and highlights included the Black-and-rufous Giant Sengi,


Macaroni Penguin,

Green Honeycreeper,


Crested Oropendola, Humboldt’s Night Monkey and of course the Eastern Gorillas that the zoo is famous for.



I definitely enjoyed my visit to Antwerp Zoo which – all things considered – is a fantastic zoo in my opinion.

 

How would you rate Antwerp compared to Artis?? I guess you liked Antwerp better (more nice birds...), but that is always a "debate" on Dutch speaking zoo forums.

 

Yes, I preferred Antwerp to Artis.

I thought Antwerp's collection was nicer (birds as well as a few other things like the nocturnal house, small primate house etc.) and although both places had several very nice exhibits (Bird and Forest house, butterfly garden, Micropia etc. at Artis) I thought Antwerp had more to it generally.

Artis and Antwerp are definitely comparable collections though.