i've not long just gotten back from twycross, not an ideal day to go due to the weather, there didn't seem to be many keepers around and theres not that many feeds or talks happening during the day either, i would have liked to have a talk about the leopards personally.
My impressions:
1/ one of the giraffes was licking the wall and there was a big orange stain, it was also licking one of the metal poles in the outside enclosure as well.
2/ the amur leopard enclosure: i think i had the most problems with this enclosure out of all of them, the outside part is lovely, it gives the animal enough places to hide, and from what i observed it felt the need to do this, the animal seemed uncomfortable when the general public was around so we moved swiftly on so as to give the animal some space, the inside closures i wasn't so chuffed about, one of them was just about adequate however i didn't feel that the cat should have been lying on the bare floor, the other one was half the size of the first one and also held a leopard, there may be a reason for this however there was no keeper there to ask.
3/ keepers were thin on the ground, we met some in the small primate houses and by the elephants but that was about it.
4/ The lion enclosure needed to be cleared out lots of bones everywhere, however the two beautiful lionesses didn't seem to mind, so why should i?
5/ the male sealion was basically moving his head around and that was it, he's a very big boy
6/ the orangs all looked quite bored, and in one of the houses an orang was sitting with its face pressed against the window and some stupid woman shoved a flash and camera in her face, needless to say i wanted to take her camera off her and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
7/ The chimps mostly stayed inside, however one of the chimps was showing off for visitors by twirling on a fire hose, and loving it
8/ the bonabo's were amazing i haven't seen any before they were mostly inside but one of the more active groups we saw today, one of them was building a den out of the crates
9/ most of the gorillas were inside and mostly sleeping, however one had braved the rain and was sat close to the glass poking its tongue out.
10/ a scottish wildcat was soaking wet and asleep in the rain.
11/ There was a block of cages which held chimps including the one with alopecia, i wasn't too impressed with those especially when i saw the new chimp house, they seem to be all on one level and most of the chimps were lying down on the floor, the keeper explained that they were old chimps, and they were trying to form groups of chimps.
12/ All in all we had a good day and apart from the few negatives i mentioned things seemed okay there, there is obviously a lot of work being done, extensions to the elephant enclosure etc etc, and i would love to know why they have a lone male sealion, are they trying to phase them out?
i have pics but need to set up my camera on the laptop, and some of them arent very good as they were taken inside
13/ p.s they have the environment thingy where they talk about recycling etc, they had real furs there, i nearly bawled my eyes out but they had some really good stuff on orangs and bonabo's. they also had an over 15 closed off area which had disturbing images.
