Chester Zoo My Chester Zoo Visits

Rhinoceros Hornbills

Visited on Saturday. There appear to be 2 new male Rhinoceros Hornbills at the zoo.
One is in the old Mauritius Kestrel aviary near the Giant Otters, with a female. This male looked like a Javan Hornbill, as it had a straight casque. (see photo on left).
The new male in the Tropical Realm looked Malayan or Bornean, as his casque pointed upwards (see photo on right- the male is just at the top of the photo.)
I couldn't get any clear shots of this male, as he was hidden behind the plants in the aviary.
Does anyone know where the old male from the Tropical Realm has gone?
Zoogiraffe mentioned that a new male had come from Paultons Park to pair up with the Chester-reared female. I am assuming that this is the pair in the kestrel aviary.
Can anyone shed any more light on this?

p.s. saw the Giant Otters & took plenty of shots. See Chester gallery.....
 
gentle lemur said:
I agree with all the suggestions that have been made - I can only add that I would check the monkey islands, the opportunities are good if they are outside (but they don't come out often) and check the miniature monkeys next door too, no-one has posted a shot of the new black-tailed marmosets yet and I would love to see a shot of the Geoffroy's marmosets feeding on sap from their 'gum tree'.

Alan
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I managed to get a picture of one of the black-tailed marmosets last week. [url=http://www.zoochat.com/42/black-tailed-marmoset-152435][/URL]
 
Save starting a new thread for one that already exists I thought I’d put my visit report here

I was looking forward to my visit to Chester Zoo but on arrival the heavens opened up and fr the best part of the day but weather aside here is what I thought of my visit
The Elephant enclosure was looking very smart the house was great and very interesting as where most of the indoor houses

I loved the vast animal collection and the way it was presented to the public with information all around and keepers willing to answer questions
My highlights of my visit were the Jaguars and cheaters as I love big cats I found the jaguar house to be a very pleasing place not just for the animals but also the public as the indoor enclosures had plenty of places for the Jaguars to gain a bit of privacy away from the glare of the public.

The oranguatans for very interesting in there pits (Yes I did say pits) I found these to be a little intimidating as this is exactly the sort of enclosure if in any other UK zoo had built it, it would have been condemned by the mass zoo public.

I loved the open plains of the deer & antelope area this was very interesting as you could look from one point and it looked like the whole collection was in one enclosure. My favourites have got to be the Gemboks they looked so majestic and very powerful and the way they moved around made it look like they were actually out in the wild.
The most impressive building I thought (went through it 5 times) was the Bat house what a fabulous place loved the feeling of being in a different world watching the large and small bats interact and the noises they made as they passed by where something I had never heard or felt before.

Why don’t more zoos do these type of Bat Houses as they are very interesting and give you a unknown sense of being out of control over your senses.

The Indian Rhino oh what an animal the powerful looking outside shell (armour) and the powerful way it moves and yet when you look in it’s eyes what a soft feeling they give out.

As I said before this zoo is very well set out and the animal collection is outstanding a few animals I would like to see in this collection are Red Wolfs, Grizzly Bears and the most beautiful animal in the Manned Wolf I think these would be great additions to this collection.

The wonderful collection of Birds in this zoo was outstanding I loved all the different types from the small to the very large and well done to the people who designed the enclosures for the birds.

Overall this was a fantastic day out and I will be returning again in August
One down point which quite a few people were passing comments about was the lack of areas to eat your own food as I noticed a lot of the old picnic areas had disappeared and not replaced with something else to eat your food in also most of the beautiful garden areas have gone other than this a wonderful day was had
 
adrian1963 said:
the lack of areas to eat your own food as I noticed a lot of the old picnic areas had disappeared and not replaced with something else to eat your food
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Lack of picnic areas :eek:? They have demolished enclosure for Porcupines and Coatis and replaced them with lawns? Surely if anything there are too many?

adrian1963 said:
the Manned Wolf I think these would be great additions to this collection
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Maned Wolves were at the zoo until a few years ago - the Butterfly house is in their place. They can make a good exhibit, but a Chester you could never see them and they stank ;)

adrian1963 said:
a fantastic day out
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I agree 100% and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
 
Considering the zoo has a lot of school visits it has a very poor amount of areas for people to eat thier own food I could only find one very small area for eating indoors with your own food and considering this is the UK's Number one zoo I find this a large let down
 
Adrian makes a good point about the picnic areas. Yes, there are a lot of lawns, but most don't have seating or shelter, so on reflection on a rainy day the options are indeed quite restrictive, especially when visitors are discouraged from taking their own food into the Tsavo Café or Ark Restaurant. There are some temporary marquees down on the Arara Lawn, but that's in a far corner of the zoo.

One other point to pick up on is that although there are some superb avian exhibits, the bird collection is somewhat smaller than it should be at the moment. Thankfully the zoo have a number of plans to address this.

Excellent to have some feedback from a different perspective.
 
adrian1963 said:
Considering the zoo has a lot of school visits it has a very poor amount of areas for people to eat thier own food I could only find one very small area for eating indoors with your own food and considering this is the UK's Number one zoo I find this a large let down
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Could you not use benches in buildings, e.g. Islands in Danger benches, Yurt Benches, Anoa bridge bench?
 
haz_cat said:
Could you not use benches in buildings, e.g. Islands in Danger benches, Yurt Benches, Anoa bridge bench?
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This may be very well for myself but when you've got 15 - 20 children then it comes a bit of a hinderence to other people walking through the indoor exhibits thier should be allocated area's for this not a miss match of little areas for the odd few people to eat.
As I have said other than this little glish this is a excellent day out for all
 
We always sit on the bench upstairs in the Tropical Realm in the corner (near the keeper access door). I like seeing the birds... :D

Ive never seen anyone else sit there but Im sure more people do....
 
adrian1963 said:
The oranguatans for very interesting in there pits (Yes I did say pits) I found these to be a little intimidating as this is exactly the sort of enclosure if in any other UK zoo had built it, it would have been condemned by the mass zoo public.
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Any chance you could explain further on this point? Yes the 3 indoor areas are not looking there best (you should of seen them on opening with lots of lovely planting). Otherthan that I think in my opinion there is no better indoor housing for Orangutans in the UK.

Please reply as I would like to see what you saw on your visit. I can understand your comment on "pits" but I rarely see the orangutans on the floor in the new house (other than Leia who seems to prefer the floor).
 
The idea of the 'pits' is that as orangs and gibbons are principally arboreal, the visitor is placed at 'treetop' height to view them. I think for the most part it works well, though the Bornean Orangs tend to hang about on the floor a lot more.

I think as the animals' usable space extends not only below the viewing area but also above it, it's hard to justify calling the exhibits pits.
 
adrian1963 said:
I loved the open plains of the deer & antelope area this was very interesting as you could look from one point and it looked like the whole collection was in one enclosure. My favourites have got to be the Gemboks they looked so majestic and very powerful and the way they moved around made it look like they were actually out in the wild.
The most impressive building I thought (went through it 5 times) was the Bat house what a fabulous place loved the feeling of being in a different world watching the large and small bats interact and the noises they made as they passed by where something I had never heard or felt before.

Why don’t more zoos do these type of Bat Houses as they are very interesting and give you a unknown sense of being out of control over your senses.
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I'm also very fond of the West Zoo paddocks - they've been basically unchanged for so long that they are always rather nostalgically 'Chesterish' to me.

I think you'd find a lot of people would agree regarding the bat house - still one of the best zoo exhibits anywhere in Britain after 13 years. There are very few exhibits I've seen get anything like the visitor reaction you get in the free-flight area.


adrian1963 said:
As I said before this zoo is very well set out and the animal collection is outstanding a few animals I would like to see in this collection are Red Wolfs, Grizzly Bears and the most beautiful animal in the Manned Wolf I think these would be great additions to this collection.
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For me the big gap was always bears. Since that has been put right a few years ago I would now say the big gap was hippos. I don't see that changing until (all being well) Heart of Africa opens.
 
I'd also be interested to read about your objections to the orang 'pits'. (I'm not trying to start a fight - just genuinely interested to see others' points of view). IMO, I think of a pit as not only something you look down into, but as an area with little or no privacy, where the animals' only view is more or less the sides of said pit and where there are often no other areas to retreat to .... thus displaying an animal as 'trapped' to my mind (okay I realise that's technically true of all zoo animals but hopefully someone appreciates what I mean). This certainly isn't true of Chester ...... there are also off show areas as required, and of course access to decent outside areas too, with lots of planting.

To obtain the height necessary to install decent lengths of rope and hose for brachiating at RORA very high ceilings were always going to be needed. If visitor viewing had been at ground level, we would not only have had a rather restricted view, we would all be suffering from a crick in the neck from looking up 30 or 40 feet (not sure of actual dimensions). Instead, the viewing floor allows us to look both up and down, and the orangs are more often 'up'.

I'm surprised you think that similar facilities at other zoos would have been condemned. I know that I would love to see something similarly spacious which gave orangs the opportunity to brachiate naturally at Twycross or Colchester for example (or anywhere else that keeps orangs).

I do agree with you about the bat house at Chester though. It's a fantastic experience to be amongst so many of these creatures, and to be able to see them reasonably well once your eyes adjust to the darkness. In other bat houses I've visited, the number of animals are either very small (so far less impressive) and/or the light is too dark to be able to make out much at all. I think Chester have the light balance there just right.
 
Visited today finally managed to see the Duiker! albeit very briefly. She looks like i fine speciemin and look forward to seeing her alot more when she has gotten use to the enclosure and the people passing through. After a few minutes she retreated to a dark corner at the back of the enclosure behind the snake exhibit. Both of the Okapi were locked outside. Iblis and Asha were very vocal towards each other with alot of dominating behaviour comingfrom Iblis. Which can only be a good thing, though today for the first time Asha was starting to look her age. Noticed that Ema and Bashira are now in the Enclosure nearest to the Tsavo Aviary side path where Margardi was previously kept.
 
haz_cat said:
I think that's been the case for a while now ;)
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This has been mentioned on here before but thought may as well remind you again.

The rhino enclosures have be built/designed so that they can be moved around to enchance the enrichment and management of the species. So get used to seeing different rhino's in different paddocks.
 
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