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The "Last-Chance Saloon" Tour of a Tea-Loving Dave - 2018

Discussion in 'Europe - General' started by TeaLovingDave, 22 Jul 2018.

  1. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Well, now you tell me :p

    At least I had yourself and @Vision on hand to ensure I missed as little as possible at Antwerp, as I shall shortly write!
     
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  2. snowleopard

    snowleopard Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    I'm going to post this information here, even though I already commented on a photo, because these days photo comments get buried on ZooChat.

    Times quoted from your epic zoo trip thread:

    Zoo Duisburg: 3 hours and 40 minutes
    Zoo Krefeld: 3 hours
    Burger's Zoo: 8 hours and 20 minutes
    Artis: 5 hours
    Diergaarde Blijdorp: 7 hours

    I'm going to visit those 5 zoos (plus 85 more!) this summer. I'll let you know how long I'm at each zoo and I'll try to emulate your times. Or you could just join me... :p
     
  3. Newzooboy

    Newzooboy Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I ate it!! It was.........pretty horrible......there you go, full review!
     
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  4. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    After a bit of a hiatus, I'm going to try to get this one written this week :) quite apart from anything else, I'll be revisiting Antwerp in a week or so and will doubtless have remarks to make on areas I missed due to exhibit closure first time round.... so I need to discuss the collection without this added context first.
     
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  5. Maguari

    Maguari Never could get the hang of Thursdays. 15+ year member Premium Member

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    Given that this is being picked up nearly 18 months after the initial trip, it would be interesting to see which species it genuinely was 'last chance' for.

    All your named targets from Duisburg and Krefeld were still on show and going strong when I visited those zoos 2 weeks ago, for example - but half of your targets from Arnhem were gone by my September 2018 visit, with another dying out shortly afterwards (the duikers from Arnhem were newly-on-show at Duisburg in June, though!).
     
  6. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Indeed - in terms of my target species at Blijdorp the Swift Fox is no longer kept, so that was another genuinely "last chance" species. I can already think of one or two other target species from later in the Low Country trip which are now gone, too.

    Once I get onto writing about the April leg in the Ruhr, and the September leg in Berlin and environs, things will possibly get a little more interesting in this regard, both in terms of which species are still present and which are now gone.

    Which gives me at least one reason to return even when Baby does eventually go to the Amazon Basin in the sky, as I suspect I'm unlikely to pick up that species anywhere else in the foreseeable!
     
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  7. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Got well over 3000 words written for this, and still only about halfway done :p so it may have to be finished after I have revisited after all!

    On the upside, I've got substantial portions of the Zie-Zoo and Best reviews written up too.
     
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  8. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Between a combination of finding it hard to write about my *first* visit to Antwerp without the additional perspective and experiences borne of my "second* visit to Antwerp colouring things, the loss of my first-drafts for the Zie-Zoo and BestZoo reviews and the most recent draft of my Antwerp review, and a distinct feeling of burn-out and futility after @snowleopard visited a *lot* of the collections I was aiming to write about in this thread and managed to write lengthy reviews for each whilst still on the move - something that my Aspergers renders somewhat impossible for me - I never did get the other half of the Antwerp review finished to my satisfaction :p

    However, I *do* want to resume this thread, even if I have to make a conscious effort to make my reviews even less comprehensive and "walkthrough" in style - as such I will now be posting my Antwerp review "as is", but with commentary in bolded and coloured italics where segments are incomplete to give a brief summary of what I had hoped to cover. This will allow me to include reflections influenced by later experience without feeling like I am compromising the original spirit of the review.

    Future reviews will definitely aim to be rather shorter and more succinct, but still provide a different perspective to that already present in the aforementioned SL reviews so as to not be completely superfluous!
     
  9. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    As with previous reviews, this will cover highlights and points I have particular thoughts on rather than being an exhibit-by-exhibit walkthrough.


    Part IX: Amour Pour Amahoro

    The following morning, we rose just after 6am and - having already packed as much as possible in preparation for the day - were able to make our way down to the hotel restaurant within 15 minutes or so, allowing us to have a relatively leisurely breakfast before heading over to catch our 0652 train, which we had booked a month or so previously. The journey itself - a direct Intercity service bound for Brussels - was quite comfortable, and in a little over two hours we arrived into Antwerpen Centraal.

    Initially, as we disembarked our train and found ourselves on a rather grim and dreary underground platform, we found the station somewhat unremarkable; however, as escalators took up steadily up, and up, and up to ground level we found ourselves in a much more ornate and - quite frankly - beautiful building, with a main entrance hall which resembled nothing so much as a cross between the ballroom of a stately home and the Hinzte Hall at the Natural History Museum in London. Exiting the station itself, we found that the exterior was no less attractive.

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    It took us only moments to reach the zoo after leaving the station; perhaps uniquely among major zoological collections in Europe, more or less the entire western border of Zoo Antwerpen is formed by the station building, and as such the entrance plaza of the zoo is only about 50 metres from the main entrance to Antwerpen Centraal. This plaza was accessed through wrought-iron gates, flanked by a pair of impressive gatehouse structures decorated with mosaics depicting a lion and a tiger apiece and topped by ornate statues, and which had until relatively-recently housed the ticket kiosks for admission. These are now located within the plaza beyond, an open area also containing the main giftshop; it is here that we awaited the arrival of @Vision , who was due to arrive into the city centre shortly after ourselves. After a short wait, he arrived and we were able to introduce ourselves and chatter for a time whilst we awaited the opening of the zoo at 10am - @KevinVar would join us a little later, as his own journey had been delayed.

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    One point on which we remarked whilst we waited was a pair of rather unusual mosaics on the rear of the aforementioned gatehouses, depicting one tortoise immersed in fire and surrounded by rain, and a second immersed in water and surrounded by fire; these, it seems, are a 2012 addition by the Belgian artist Jan Fabre serving as a memorial to a pair of Greek Tortoises he owned in his youth, which perished in dubious circumstances making it unclear whether they burned or boiled to death.

    -----

    Zoo Antwerpen

    Approximate time taken at collection: 400 minutes.
    Zoochatters met: @Vision , @KevinVar
    Target species: Eastern Gorilla, Humboldt Night Monkey, Vieillot's Weaver, Hamlyn's Guenon

    One of the most important aspects to the first time one enters a new collection is the impression left by the first major exhibit seen; as such it boded well that in the case of Antwerpen, this was most certainly a positive one. The Winter Garden - located in the complex of buildings immediately next to the main entrance - was an attractive and lushly-vegetated building which, we were informed, is used as a butterfly house during the spring and summer months. Even without being able to experience the primary purpose of this area, given the time of year we were viewing it, we were nonetheless able to appreciate the way in which an old structure can be repurposed in an effective and visually-appealing fashion for the requirements of a modern zoo, whilst retaining a lot of the original feel and charm of the structure itself; a balancing act which we were already well-aware has possibly been the major issue which has faced Antwerpen over the decades. As such, this initial experience of how this issue has been handled at the collection was encouraging.

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    We were somewhat less-taken with the next major exhibit we visited, immediately next to the Winter Garden, was the Small Monkey House - the quality of the exhibits within was somewhat variable, from the pleasant but average to the actively-poor, but all were stymied by the apparent lack of any outdoor access for the inhabitants and the generally small size of the individual exhibits. In terms of resemblance to exhibits I had seen elsewhere, the general style of the enclosure design seemed to be quite akin to the interior housing within the Ape House at Zoo Berlin, generally comprising variable configurations of climbing material, concrete shelving and sleeping boxes. Frustratingly, the species usually held within this area which I had most hoped to see - Hamlyn's Guenon - was temporarily off-display; I had, of course, seen the species on several previous occasions, but given the fact I have a soft spot for unusual guenons and this particular species has experienced a marked decline in recent years I like to seize on any opportunity to see it once again, lest it be the last time.

    Just after leaving the monkey house, we were joined by Kevin - from here, after passing a row of rather pleasant exhibits for Dusky Pademelon (Thylogale brunii), Queensland Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus adustus) and Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo (Dendrolagus goodfellowi buergersi) , our wanderings took us past the housing and one of the exterior paddocks for the Okapi (Okapia johnstoni) held at the collection. This is one of my favourite species of hoofstock, and given my particular liking for Moorish-style architecture - one of several lingering influences which my degree in Medieval History and specialist focus on the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean culture has left on my larger aesthetic and stylistic tastes - the fact that the house for this species was strongly modelled along these lines very much grabbed my attention. Zoo Antwerpen is quite a significant collection as regards Okapi; not only was it the first collection in the world to hold the species - albeit briefly - in 1919, mere years after it was initially described, but it has also held the species continuously since 1948, longer than anywhere else to the best of my knowledge, and currently holds the international studbook for the captive breeding programme. The single paddock we were able to view - one of the paths leading alongside the okapi house, which appeared from the map to allow viewing of a second paddock, was closed at the time of our visit - was designed along relatively simple lines but was spacious and pleasant, if a little less thickly-vegetated than most external exhibits for this species.

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    The main interior housing for the species is not visible to the public, but in recent years an annexe has been constructed connecting this area to the Ape House, permitting the general public to view a single indoor stable - this was unoccupied at the time of our visit, but seemed a little bland and stark to my eyes.

    We next reached the Ape House and the surrounding complex of exterior and semi-exterior exhibits; this was one of the particular highlights of Zoo Antwerpen as a whole, in my opinion, with a number of small mammal species - most notably Black-and-Rufous Elephant Shrew (Rhynchocyon petersi) - displayed in exhibits which had been efficiently converted from former indoor enclosures for Siamang and several callitrichid species - alongside the chimpanzee and gorilla groups held in the main body of the house. These groups comprised the following taxa:

    Non-subspecific Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), Eastern Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and Central Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes troglodytes)
    Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and Eastern Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri)

    The lattermost of these species was, of course, the main reason why this collection had been added to this Last-Chance Saloon trip, given the fact that Amahoro - the single female held at Antwerp - is the sole member of her species remaining in captivity outside the native range, after the death of a second female at the collection, Victoria, some years ago. It goes without saying that we returned to this area of the collection throughout the day in order to attempt to take better photographs of Amahoro :p the difference between her and her congenerics was startling, and instantly-apparent; it is a great pity that the species never established itself in the same fashion as the Western Lowland Gorilla, as I feel that in many ways it is the more attractive.

    [​IMG]

    The exhibits within this house and the surrounding environs can be separated into three distinct categories - interior, semi-exterior and exterior. The first and last of these rather speak for themselves, but the second category perhaps merits further explanation - until the new and extensive exterior exhibits were added to the complex a year or so previously, the only exterior exhibits provided were - and still are - large mesh-covered courtyards surrounded on all sides by walls, which as a result are significantly sheltered from the elements. The interior exhibits for the gorillas are relatively small, albeit serviceable, and generally speaking follow a similar general design to those found within the Small Monkey House; however, the formerly-similar interior exhibits for the chimpanzees have been rather extended due to the former public viewing area being split off and merged with these exhibits subsequent to the addition of the new exterior enclosures. The aforementioned semi-exterior enclosures for the two great ape groups are significantly better, being thick with climbing materials, nesting material and imitation rockwork and trees, and even without the recent addition of truly outdoor enclosures would have ranked among some of the best exhibits for great apes I have seen in a collection such as Antwerp restrained by historical structures and a city-centre location - certainly it left the housing for Western Lowland Gorilla at London, another such collection, in the dust! The newest additions to this complex comprise verdant and spacious exhibits akin to the outdoor ape enclosures at collections such as Zoo Berlin and Bristol Zoo, providing a massive extension to the area available to the species in question and a resulting uptick in the husbandry quality.... in theory anyway :p we were informed by our companions that - at the time of our visit - these exhibits were currently rather under-used by the inhabitants, which largely continued to prefer their existing housing!

    (Here I intended to write at quite some length about the Buffalo Savanna aviary exhibit – this was a particular highlight of my visit to Antwerp in 2018, and I was particularly impressed at how well the enclosure, which I was given to understand by Vision had previously been a rather sub-par exhibit for rhinoceros, had been converted to hold a mixture of Cape Buffalo and at least a dozen species of African birds. I was even more impressed with this exhibit when I saw it in July 2019, therefore being able to view it with rather more verdant vegetation and active inhabitants, and – much as was the case in February 2018 – found myself very much of the opinion that Zoo Antwerp seems to have a very good grasp on how an old exhibit in a city-centre zoo with limited space can be retrofitted into a new and attractive exhibit, something that London Zoo regrettably seems to lack.)

    [​IMG]

    I then intended to write at some length about the giraffe housing and the historical use of the so-called Egyptian Temple to hold a wide variety of hoofstock species over the years, noting that this is one of the areas where the collection has experienced greater trouble in retro-fitting an older and inadequate exhibit, and for much the same reason that London has faltered in recent decades – structures and exhibits being listed and/or otherwise protected, and therefore unable to be modified or replaced. This section would have also briefly bemoaned the fact I was a few short years too late to see Masai Giraffe!

    [​IMG]

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    Another relatively negative note would have been highlighted here, with a brief discussion of the lion exhibit at Zoo Antwerp – I felt this was a little old and ramshackle, and overall one of the more poor exhibits at the collection whilst still being adequate for the purpose at hand. I would have also discussed the fact that until some time prior to my 2018 visit, the main body of the lion enclosure was accessible by the meerkats displayed in a neighbouring enclosure.

    [​IMG]

    Here I planned to remark on the fact that – much to my disappointment – the Bird House at Antwerp was closed at the time of my February 2018 visit to the collection as a result of renovation work, with only those exhibits present on the exterior of the house visible (and most of the inhabitants of said exhibits remaining indoors due to the cold weather, unfortunately). However, I was rather taken with how attractive the external architecture of the house was, and as such this portion of the zoo was one of the things I most looked forward to seeing on my return in July 2019. I still hope to write about that particular trip – possibly as a postscript to the original scope of this thread, much as my various continental trips in 2019 were a postscript to my 2018 “Last Saloon” trips – so I won’t go into much more detail here, than to say I was very pleased with the Bird House once I was finally able to view it properly.

    [​IMG]

    Another lengthy and rather in-depth discussion of one of the big highlights of the collection at the time of my 2018 visit would have followed at this point – to wit, the Nocturnal House which held many of the biggest highlights of the Antwerp animal collection as a whole. I enjoyed it very much and as such felt a distinct sense of sadness when I returned in 2019 to find a much-reduced exhibit complex in the final stages of being wound down into permanent closure, due to the corresponding closure and demolition of the indoor sealion exhibit positioned directly above the Nocturnal House. This sealion exhibit – which once held Bottlenose Dolphin – would have been one of the portions of the collection which I wrote about with the most negativity, as would the nearby rows of bird of prey aviaries. These – rather gratifyingly, given the fact they were by some margin the worst thing at the collection at the time of both of my visits – have also now been demolished to the best of my knowledge.

    One of the largest sections of my originally-planned review of my 2018 visit to Antwerp would have been a lengthy discussion of the Reptile House, which was perhaps one of the biggest highlights of the day both in terms of exhibit quality and the size and taxonomic range of the collection within. Again, this is an area which I will hopefully cover properly at some point down the line – if not in a review of my July 2019 visit, possibly in a stand-alone thread reviewing this house in particular – and as such I will leave matters here for now. At the time of my February 2018 visit, the nearby penguin house was also closed, so this is another aspect which a future review will hopefully cover.

    At this point, having covered most of the major negative and positive points of the collection, I intended to write a handful of scattergun paragraphs which (in my handwritten notes for the review) I listed as “GENERAL OBSERVATIONS, BUILDING STYLE, NOTABLE FEATURES AND ANIMAL ART”

    The first few paragraphs would have covered topics such as the Red Panda exhibit, which I felt was a very interesting use of space having been converted from old big cat exhibits along with several other nearby exhibits, and repeated the general motif of how Antwerp has done quite a good job (on the most part) of converting older and inadequate exhibits into newer and more suitable ones.


    [​IMG]

    The next paragraph or two would have covered one of the long-running themes in my zoo walkthroughs and reviews, that of the artwork and animal statues located in zoological collections and my strong soft spot for such things. Antwerp rated quite highly in this regard both at the time of my February 2018 visit and also my July 2019 visit; in fact, there were certain statues and pieces of artwork I completely overlooked in 2018 (and which would therefore have gone unremarked on in the originally-planned review) but which I was extremely taken with during my 2019 visit – as such this is an area where my estimations of the collection grew without anything much having changed per se.

    [​IMG]

    I would have then concluded the general discussion of particular notable features by highlighting a pair of aspects, one zoological and one architectural/aesthetic. The first of these would have been my particular pleasure at the quality of the educational material and theming in the “Mountain Area” of the zoo, particularly a specific display which represented the varying ecological niches at differing altitudes occupied by a range of mountain-specialist fauna:

    [​IMG]

    The second of these would have been a (probably lengthy) discussion of the historical 'Melkerij' building and the surrounding Flemish Garden – one of the most beautiful parts of the zoo in my opinion even during the drab winter months of my 2018 visit, and (although this would not have been reflected in the originally-planned review) even moreso once I had the chance to see the zoo during the summer months of 2019. This would have also been the point at which I briefly touched on the excellent horticultural “feel” of the zoo, which at some points allowed me to almost forget I was in a relatively small city centre zoo.

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    The final portion of the review, before giving my usual account of our journey back to our hotel and our evening meal, would have been a conclusion drawing various threads together, foremost of which would have been a final return to the recurring discussion of how Antwerp has handled the problem of being a modern-day zoo tied to a city-centre site with no scope for expansion, and with a large number of older and often architecturally-protected (but also zoologically insufficient) exhibits which need to be worked around, drawing particular comparisons to how Artis and London Zoo have faced similar issues and largely met them successfully – in the case of the former – or faltered – in the case of the latter, and concluding that Antwerp very much fits the same mould as Artis in this regard.
     
    Last edited: 3 Oct 2020
  10. twilighter

    twilighter Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Thank you for the comprehensive review @TeaLovingDave! I visited the collection in the autumn of 2018 and your summary bringed pleasant memories. Do you know what is the current status of the Nocturnal House, by the way ?
     
  11. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    As far as I know, it is now closed and empty :(
     
  12. twilighter

    twilighter Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I wasn't sure, but it is really sad, indeed... It was one of the best parts of my visit and one of the best I have ever seen.