I visited again yesterday! Here are some of the different things I noticed from my last visit, nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to what we discussed in the forum, but I do have a few surprises:
- The squirrel monkey, toucan, and aracari exhibits are right by the entrance, filling the space between the tortoises and walkthrough aviary. I'll be posting the pictures soon, and I gotta say I really liked them! The exhibits are spacious, filled with various live plants, diverse substrate mixtures, and a fair share of perching areas and climbing elements. The squirrel monkey indoors exhibit is also viewable for visitors. I thought the squirrel monkey was especially spacious, I really liked it. The squirrel monkeys are signed as Saimiri boliviensis peruviensis.
- Changes in the aviary mainly include that I saw the Ferruginous ducks, other than that the Chiloe wigeon seems to have left the collection.
- The new staff building is being built where the old serval enclosure was, it's two stories high and construction seems to go pretty well.
- The new fallow deer stable is already standing up, and according to a sign, it will also be the stable for the donkeys that are in front. The fallow deer will also get an expansion in the area right next to the lynxes, which once was part of the donkey exhibit.
- The African crested porcupines seem to have left the collections, I didn't spot them anywhere at the zoo nor they were signed.
- As we discussed before, the pygmy goat walkthrough exhibit has been connected to what on my last visit was the Cameroon sheep and Anglo-Nubian goat exhibit, and it has expanded a bit to the back. Somali sheep and a few Alpacas have been added to the exhibit as well.
- The Painted stork has been paired up with another individual, a juvenile Saddle-billed stork has been moved to this exhibit as well as a flock of four Madagascar sacred ibises. The tragopans are still signed to be in this aviary but once again, didn't get to see them.
- The Southern grey-crowned cranes have been joined by a pair of Grey-cheeked hornbills.
- A new female Papuan hornbill has been exhibited alongside a male of the same species and the Siberian crane.
- A pair of Blue cranes have been added to the aviary where the Southern ground hornbill lives at.
- A pair of Magpie geese have joined the Indian sarus cranes. The magpie goose population in the walkthrough aviary has dropped to a single individual.
- The Sandhill cranes were moved to the second to last aviary in the row, in my visit last year they were in the last aviary. The pair of chicks that hatched back in May are growing up.
- The last aviary is now inhabited by the Brolga pair as well as the Palawan hornbills.
- The Ouessant sheep seems to have left the collection.
- The Blue-headed quail-doves have access to the entire parrot aviary, and the Southern screamers exhibited here last year are no longer there.
- The savannah is now fully finished, with no construction tape nor excessive adaptation hotwire. All the animals were living together (the zebras last year were showing aggressive behavior towards the zebu, but this year I even saw them lay down together) and it looks really nice and lively. A flock of a few Helmeted guineafowl are living alongside the ungulates, with the inclusion of a little shaded area for them by the "Le Jabiru" snack bar. I also noticed that the Grant's zebra stallion that has been in the park for a while and has fathered the foal that is in the savannah alongside its mother wasn't visible. Instead of it a new zebra was in the paddock, and it was a Burchell's zebra. It looked like a female to me.
- It's hard to notice, but the top of some off-show aviaries can be noticed from the visitor path. I was lucky enough to notice a strange figure, so I decided to look a little bit closer and noticed an Inca jay, as well as a pair of Eclectus parrots (Maybe the same Eclectus roratus solomonensis that were exhibited in the zoo until very recently).
- The guinea pig pens have been unified into one large exhibit, and this time around I got to see the wing-clipped Red-shouldered turquoise-fronted amazons.