I popped down to the zoo for an hour yesterday to say hello to the black cockatoo in the Great Flight Aviary (but he was being antisocial). Anyway, near the zoo entrance at the railway station end, there used to be a small aviary with Gang-gang cockatoos, just over on the left. I couldn't find them, but I did find an aviary with sun conures and a nanday conure. Can anyone confirm whether a switcheroo occurred, or whether I lost my bearings?
A switcheroo definitely occurred! I went there yesterday looking for the Gang - Gangs and found Sun Conures. They hadn't been there long (I overheard some keepers talking)
I have made two visits to Melbourne Zoo in the last three days - one on an absolutely beautiful spring Sunday afternoon that was very busy, and again for about 1.5 hours this afternoon after work. The reason for the repeat visit is that the new baboon enclosure opened today. It is big - very big. After the elephants, giraffe/zebra/ostrich paddock and Great Flight Aviary, I think it's the fourth biggest enclosure in the zoo. It might even have a greater floor area than the GFA - it's hard to tell because they are different shapes. There is easily room for the baboon troop to expand out to perhaps 30 members. The enclosure is situated in the northern portion of the zoo, where the bongo paddock used to be (and before that, if your knowledge of Melbourne goes back that far, the area was one a paddock for blackbuck and spotted deer). The baboons have swapped their old view - of red panda and tree kangaroo enclosures and a tarmac path - for outlooks onto the Australian bush section. They can also see and hear both trains and trams going past outside the zoo. They will also be able to hear big crowds at the state hockey centre on the other side of the train line. They have a much better vantage point for seeing birds, planes, hot air balloons and so on as they fly over the zoo. They will be able to hear the lions much better, and smell the zebras, bongos and giraffe. I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect they'll be able to see all of the latter as well. So all in all, the baboons are in a much more interesting part of the zoo for them. The enclosure itself offers some limited climbing opportunities, but no attempt has been made to hide the troop's night den, which has more of the built-environment climbing opportunities they are used to from their old cage, such as swings, tyres, ropes and wooden jungle gyms. There are a couple of dead trees in the exhibit that the monkeys can climb, and a baboon was busily denuding one of them of bark. That won't last long. The general shape of the exhibit is of a large mound, sloping down towards the fence in all directions. This means that the baboons can get out of view if they want as well as facilitating the views out of the enclosure that I mentioned earlier. There are large numbers of rocks and some plants that are currently protected by hotwire to enable them to get established. There is also a pool in the exhibit that provides drinking water. There are two main views into the exhibit. One is a large glass window that juts out into the centre of the exhibit about four metres. The other is about five metres around to the right and allows open-air viewing. The exhibit on this side has been sunk down so that viewers at this vantage point are standing at the top of a ha-ha style wall. Overall, it is not quite an outstanding exhibit, but certainly a creditable addition to the zoo and about a 900% improvement for the baboons. I only had about 15 minutes to watch them today but the impression I got is that they are a lot calmer and relaxed as a group. They are no longer forced to sit under each other's noses all the time. The result? They choose to do so, but the screaming that used to be common in the baboon troop was not heard today. Also - watching almost twenty baboons moving as a group through a large enclosure is one of the better primate experiences available in Australia. Other little bits and pieces of news at the zoo: - From somewhere, God only knows where, Melbourne Zoo has acquired a curassow. I'm not really familiar with these birds, so I don't know what species it is, but it's not the bird at Adelaide Zoo, which I had thought was the last one in Australia. It has just been introduced in the last week into the large, heritage-listed macaw aviary near the zoo plaza. - Green-winged macaws are nowhere to be found. - Luzon bleeding-heart pigeons are now in the second of the Asian-precinct aviaries. Five grey-headed flying foxes now share an aviary with two hand-raised bush stone-curlews and *I think* a kookaburra or two. - The four tiger cubs (not really cubs anymore) have been split into two same-sex pairs for contraceptive reasons. The two groups alternate in the main exhibit. A keeper/presenter said that Binjai has been moved down to the big cat alley area where the snow leopards, puma and Persian leopard are also housed, but I didn't see her there. On the subject of big cat alley, the zoo is down to one puma now. - Rigo is still showing no sign of being interested in breeding. He has mated once since becoming the main group silverback... with Yuska, who is incapable of conceiving again. G-Ann and Julia are not getting any younger. They simply must make a tough decision soon - whether it be to artificially inseminate them or move Rigo out and source a new silverback. - According to a FOTZ volunteer who seemed unusually well-informed, the zoo has not-quite-concrete plans for the area now occupied by the off-display bachelor gorillas. These three gorillas will move out to Werribee in the next few weeks and the aim, in the medium-term, is to raze the old ape grottoes and build an 'Islands' precinct. The volunteer did not mention any new species to come into the zoo, but did say the zoo's lemurs (Madagascar) and tree kangaroos (New Guinea) are earmarked for the new precinct. I'm aware that the long-term plan is to expand the giraffe/zebra/ostrich paddock and the Aldabran giant tortoise exhibit is expected to make way for that, so they may be a third species in the new area. The zoo also has a stated intention to add Komodo dragons and Tasmanian devils to the collection, and (I'm really speculating a great deal now) they could perhaps complete the picture. The Zoo has had Victorian-based international zoo design firm John Coe Design produce high, medium and low-budget exhibit plans for the new zone.
I noticed Taronga's Currasow was not on display earlier this month. Maybe it's been sourced from there?
Probably, though I was under the impression that Taronga's curassow was elderly and had died. This bird did not give me the impression that it was really old - and why would Melbourne source an elderly animal from interstate?
I'm guessing it was taronga's one, but I was also under the same impression as CGSwans, that it was very elderly and had passed away.
Despite Melbourne being the first zoo in the world to achieve successful AI in Gorillas, it has not been perfected since then and is still very difficult to achieve success, so I think would be a very complicated path for them to follow, with absolutely no guarantee of success at the end of it. My personal preference would be to see Rigo 'retired' (they have given him more than enough time now to show he's not up to it) with the two young males, and Motaba reinstated with 'his' females -as we know he will breed with both G.Anne and Julia, whereas a fresh male might not- particularly with G.Anne who is not a well-socialised female. Unlike in America or Europe its not so simple for an Australian Zoo to bring in a new unrelated male, so I think in this particular case it makes sense to let Motaba have the breeding opportunity again (subject to which females its recommended he actually breed with.) His own daughter would need to be relocated to allow her to breed of course- either at TP or abroad, but this particular exchange of males would be the easiest option and would definately allow Melbourne to resume having a breeding group again. Good news about the Baboons at long last!
Thanks for the update. I have seen the female tiger in the exhibit that previously held the pumas in the big cat exhibits. As much as I hate those exhibits from an aesthetics point of view, it is hard to deny that they're actually not that bad in terms of keeping animals. They're super flexible (some have held three or four species in the last couple of years) and they aren't small, just too narrow to get a good view down to the back. The curassow is a nice new species. I can remember when that beautiful aviary held two species of macaw (scarlet and blue and gold), squirrel monkeys and agoutis. Hopefully the plan is to make it something like that again soon. I won't be able to visit until Friday so I'll have to wait 3 whole days until I can see it for myself. Did you take any photos of the baboon exhibit?
Yeah, school's out soon, so try to get in a visit this week before the crush. And don't forget that the little ones get free entry, so there may be even larger crowds from this weekend. I should take my own advice and try to visit tomorrow...... Great review by CGSwans, by the way.
Are the Buffons and Blue and Gold macaws still in the aviary? Green-winged macaws? Really? Where were they kept? Did you see the gang gang cockatoos anywhere? What happened to the other puma?
Sorry Pat, no photos. I left home for work at 4:30am and finding my camera was not a priority. With the new curassow, yes. The Green-winged macaws were in a small-ish aviary near the red pandas. That aviary is now occupied by the red-fronted macaws that used to live in the main macaw aviary. Nope. Didn't see any of the black cockatoos in the GFA, either. Well, there's only one reasonable supposition...
Cheers for the reply. I wonder what happened to the friendly black cockatoo? Hopefully he was not stolen...... Regarding the puma, my suppositions were: it died it was moved to another part of the zoo it was moved to another zoo it was moved off display Which is the one reasonable supposition?
As regards the razor-billed curassow: I'd bet money that it's the old bird from Taronga, who has been in at least three zoos in Australia in it's lifetime so far and who was in very good condition last time I saw it a few months back (shiny plumage and smooth "unscaley" legs.) Maybe someone from either zoo could solve the mystery. As for Melbourne's baboons - I'd like to congratulate whoever decided to keep baboons at Melbourne Zoo, and not just ship them all off to Werribee. (That's the sort of thing Taronga would have done.)
Right. What other zoos has she been at? I still think it's what Zoos Vic should have done. Melbourne has 12 other primate species on display, one temporarily off-display and plans to acquire and exhibit two more. Werribee, by contrast, will have only its second primate species when the gorillas arrive, and is crying out for more species in general.
