Never mind the spelling - what a horrible, dated-looking sign. Has the feel of something you'd see at a downmarket farm park, rather than one of Europe's top zoos.
Never mind the spelling - what a horrible, dated-looking sign. Has the feel of something you'd see at a downmarket farm park, rather than one of Europe's top zoos.
Is this on one of the aviaries near that weird garden with the crazy statue in the middle of a pond? Because I loved those aviaries. They were like a little walk into the past.
parrakeet is an acceptable alternative spelling of parakeet (via the association with "parrot" with two Rs). It is true that parrakeet is an older form not often seen nowadays, but it is not by any stretch a "mistake".
Not a hanging offence, of course, but the old schoolteacher in me thinks of all the children who will read that sign. It is a careless and avoidable error - so the people responsible should have been more careful and avoided it.
Please don't even suggest that Chester changes the style of its signs - they will pay designers a small fortune to use the new branding and jazzy graphics to produce hundreds of signs that people won't read or understand. Even with this very plain style most visitors read 'warty pig' as 'wart hog' or 'water pig'
BTW the aviaries that PAT refers to are still off show. As SMR said originally, the beautiful Derbyans live beside the elephant house.
This sign packs a great deal of information into a small space, and the use of illustrations seems quite effective in showing the species nesting and social structure.
Never mind the spelling - what a horrible, dated-looking sign. Has the feel of something you'd see at a downmarket farm park, rather than one of Europe's top zoos.
But in fairness that's mainly because they were mass-produced for smaller zoos to purchase and all the big zoos (except Chester, for whom they were designed) have either made their own or have since replaced them!
I quite like them as signs for smaller exhibits or for temporary labels.
I wonder as I'm sure do many of you how many people read the signs any way?
For example a few years ago I was looking at scarlet Ibis in a mixed aviary at Colchester Zoo when I over heard the following conversation from 2 elderly ladies along side me.
FIRST VISITOR: "I've always loved them birds, they are my favourites"
HER FRIEND: "which ones"
FIRST VISITER with Exasperated loud reply "the flamingos"
