Well the first thing you come across at the entrance is a bunch of Domestic Rabbits. Then you go inside and there's a tank with a Fly River Turtle and some Red Rainbowfish (Glossolepis incisus) You keep going and then there's two sections: one with your general grouping of domestics in a petting zoo setting, and a large area completely enclosed in an aviary. Inside the aviary it's mostly one large pond with White-Headed Ducks, Baer's Pochards, even more Chinese Mergansers, Emperor Geese, and I think one other duck species. There's also some Himalayan Monals and a Brown Eared-Pheasant that's free to run around. There's a second tank inside the aviary that's suppose to hold Goldfish but it was empty yesterday. Inside the aviary there's also a decent-sized Patagonian Cavy enclosure with quite a few cavies. I was quite pleased with it actually and it had the best signage I've ever seen in a children's zoo. Even the Goldfish tank had a sign that read "Carassius auratus auratus" and the Fly River Turtle/Red Rainbowfish tank had signage with scientific names, too!
Nice assemblage of duck species in aviary 1. A joy to see!
Even better that these are all not too frequently seen …
I wish more zoos in Continental Europe would realize the importance of keeping and breeding white-headed ducks (instead of the obligatory and some of the more common other Oxyura species) and the scaly sided mergansers (and mmm … Baer's pochards!!!).
I'm not sure about the White-Headed Ducks but I do know that the zoo breeds the pochards and mergansers. In fact, the zoo has so many pochards and mergansers they're held in two enclosures!
