Germany Part 9 - Hagenbeck to the future
Sock of the day: Penguin
This will be my last major update for a while. I've now arrived in Denmark and tomorrow I'll go and stay with friends and the writing will stop. The Danish zoos I visit, a list still in flux, will hopefully get some kind of round up post later.
I spent three days in Hamburg, enjoying what is a very nicely constructed modern city. In the end I didn't go to Kiel as there was just more to do in Hamburg. This meant I didn't actually use all my travel days on my interrail pass, but it was still a godsend as it allowed me to spontaneously do Berlin. Possibly, having had the extra travel day I could have worked in Leipzig, but there's always a good reason to go back.
As I'm writing this I am deliberately not reading CGSwans' post, the notification for which just hit my alerts, so there may be some duplication (which would be natural!). For those not following ZooChat's premier summer travel thread, we arranged to meet-up to enjoy Hagenbeck together. For once I was early, which Vision and lintworm can attest is not my strong suit. I can't claim the credit for this because I misremembered the directions I read on Google the night before. In any case, I was waiting happily when a vision in red approached; CGSwans was helpfully wearing a Sydney Swans polo shirt to really hammer home the point.
Hagenbeck Tierpark, July 29th
I started this German leg in Cologne with a ZooChatter and I finished it in Hamburg in the same way. Cologne could lay a case for being the best all-round zoo on the trip, sadly Hamburg was quite the opposite. I was deeply grateful for CGSwans' company, as without him I would have felt it was a day virtually wasted. His knowledge of the historical significance of the collection was also better than mine, so a double boon.
There's no easy way to say this, and it won't be fun to hear either, but....
Hamburg came off as the shell of a once great zoo. There were highlights for sure, and I'll dwell on those, but in general it was not impressive at all. Again, weather played its part, but this feels like a tired collection that is not moving forward.
Entry is an eye-watering thirty euros for the zoo and the aquarium, or twenty and fourteen each respectively. We did the aquarium last, but in fact it was undoubtedly the best, most up-to-date part of the collection, although not my favourite. A very large walkthrough indoor aviary forms the core of it, with herps and inverts tucked away under the internal architecture and then a separate floor for fish below all of that. Sadly we didn't have time to passerine hunt in the main aviary, as there were a couple of things we both needed, but I did get a brief glimpse of a male Paradise whydah, a nice pick-up after missing them at Walsrode. There are two features of interest in the aviary; a huge pool for Nile crocs, and a two story building with a restaurant on the top. Underneath perhaps the most noteworthy exhibit was one for fruit bats with wire instead of glass; it was 'pungent' to say the least.
The aquarium, as in the fishy bit, was actually really excellent, and the final tank was both surprisingly large and surprisingly well done. We spent a lot longer in here than we had planned.
It's hard to explain exactly why I'm so down on Hamburg, but we might as well start with a list of notably poor enclosures: tigers, giant otters, polar bears and lions. The holding for the very rare Three-horn face was also completely inadequate.
Now before the old hands start spluttering, it's necessary to point out the lion enclosure is part of the classic African panorama. You stand in a corner of the zoo and look across the Flamingo pool to the Zebra, Warthog and Ostrich savannah, above which you can see, just, a pride of Lions, and then finally rising above all of this is a rocky mountain with Barbary sheep and Tahr. It's very impressive, particularly as you can walk between all the exhibits to get closer views, out of sight of the main vantage point. I'm also a sucker for a good goat mountain, and this is a good goat mountain. The problem here, as I've already alluded to, is that it's not a good lion exhibit. It's very small indeed. I wonder if it's completely unalterable or if they could somehow extend it in someway. Something of a quandary for the zoo no doubt.
The Eismeer is an exhibit complex featuring Polar bear, walrus, South American fur seal, Humboldt's, King and Gentoo penguins, as well as puffins, guillemots and other seabirds. Walruses were a huge lifer for me, and we spent a long time watching the six Hamburg has. They're completely entrancing, and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to see them. No tusks, but really still one of the highlights of the trip. The puffin aviary was very tastefully netted, and the indoor penguin exhibit rivals Wuppertal as the best I've seen. A pity then, that when they built or renovated all this in 2009 they chose to tack on a thoroughly third rate polar bear exhibit, which in terms of size and lack of substrate seems to have come from a different era. Almost as if it's embarrassed by itself, it's also tucked away at the back with frankly poor viewing opportunities. Very much the turd in the hamper (points if you get the reference).
Opposite the Eismeer is a delightful little bird house, with some rarities to boot. One aviary netted us both five new passerines, which given how far through Europe CGSwans is is quite an achievement!
The hoofstock paddocks are mostly unremarkable, and there's nothing wrong with that. Our first view inside the zoo was onagers with camels behind, which you might say was very Hagenbeckian. The brown bear exhibit is also very middle of the road, but we had fun trying to guess the subspecies (Kamchatka, if you're playing at home).
Two expansive cages for North Chinese Leopard and Mandrill in the same style as the ones for Siberian tigers were impressive where the latter had disappointed. The elephant enclosure was again perfectly ordinary, but sadly we witnessed Hamburg's notorious elephant husbandry, with keeper not just in free but seemingly constant contact, and plenty of use of the bullhook. I don't know what I'm talking about of course, but I note that this form of interaction has been left behind by other zoos and I imagine they do.
I had read about Hamburg's Orangutan enclosure before. It's a huge translucent dome that can be rotated open or closed depending on the weather, so that indoor exhibit becomes the outdoor exhibit. A interesting idea, but inside the dome is essentially a traditional, albeit well executed, orang island and I can't help feeling that such a huge space could have been better used if the orangs had access to all of it. The concept of opening it wouldn't work anymore but it would be a truly great exhibit anyway, particularly if you got the visitors up high inside. Active individuals were nice to see, as were the ASCOs that are mixed with them.
As I write this review I'm cautious of being too harsh on Hagenbeck. Part of the problem is that due to the pricing structure the aquarium feels like a separate entity. Part of the problem is that this is my tenth zoo in two weeks and so a good collection isn't the draw it should be. Fundamentally though, Hagenbeck is a zoo that should be a modern day giant rather than just a historical one. And it is so far from that. The way forward is obvious: build more panoramas or panorama-like exhibits. Lean into your strengths. More than any other zoo I've been to, this is the one I'd love to see turned around.
