I visited today, for the first time since August, because the buildings finally reopened!
Birds:
-The swift parrots (in the parrot aviaries) now share their space with Blue-faced honeyeaters. Instead of just a pair of swift parrots I counted at least 12 of them (maybe more, hard to count!). Really impressive, of a species you don't often see in big groups in zoos!
-The Chestnut-eared aracaris are on-show in the right "wing" of the central macaw aviary, presumably together with Hyacinth macaws but I didn't see those.
-A few movements went on in the bird house, the full list will be in a following post but 1 male Swallow tanager, 1 male Spangled cotinga, 1 male Blue dacnis and both pairs of Turquoise tanager are now on-show. The swallow tanager and cotinga are in the large South American enclosure, the other two species are in with the buttonquails.
-The Spangled cotinga apparently has issues acclimating to the enclosure and the glass, so if you want to see it there you might want to be fast... It's very shy, and spends a lot of time right under the skylights (so you need to duck to see it).
-The former large macaw exhibit has been redecorated and now has red sand and typical deserty plants - its inhabitants now seem to just be almost all of the waxbills that were previously present throughout the zoo (everything in the nocturnal hall, the Red-faced parrotfinches, Timor zebra finches, Common waxbills, and Gouldian finches that were in other exhibits).
-It seems that a few species are no longer on-show: Black crake, Northern helmeted curassow, Red-and-yellow barbet, Cinnamon-breasted ground-dove... I haven't kept a full list in a while but definitely the African aviary felt like it was very empty with only 1 starling species, 1 fowl species and no turacos at all anymore.
-There were many fledglings, particularly in the large Asian aviary indoors but also elsewhere: the Mindanao bleeding-hearts, Common emerald doves, Chestnut-backed ground thrushes, Cut-throat finches, Eurasian hoopoes, Green woodhoopoes and Pied avocets have definitely bred.
-The male Crested oropendola is displaying often right now - really cool to see, and (especially) hear! Also the male Hoopoe in the bee-eater aviary is vocalizing actively.
Mammals:
-I saw all four zebras in the Rhinoceros enclosure today, with the rhinos being indoors - It looked like it was connected to the rest of the Savannah, but I'm not 100% positive.
-Might be old news, but it seems the Parma wallabies are gone.
-There was a group of Nutrias in the leftmost exhibit of the hippo house, which I think is a species that is back after a short gap of absence in Antwerp Zoo?
Herps:
-The exhibit that used to have the Rosy boa now has a Great Lakes bush viper, and there was an unsigned arboreal snake (perhaps/probably the same species but I'll try seeing if my pics are good enough to be sure) in one of the back nursery terraria.
-There was a sign outside the reptile house saying a lot of new species will come soon. Species mentioned are Caiman lizard, Baron's green racer, Crocodile skink, Long-nosed horned frog and Common snake-necked turtle. These, alongside the bush vipers mentioned above, are all species kept at the recently closed Serpentarium in Blankenberge owned by the KMDA, so it looks like a few of the better species from there might be coming over.
