While they are great enclosures, I feel that the area itself is lacking due to baboon island and number of staff buildings also feel like the two buildings should really have been connected. The hoof stock suffer from this as well.
The problem here is that when Brookfield Zoo was constricuted in 1934, the layout intention was that the northern area would be home to almost exclusively outdoor habitats for the warm summers, and the southern area to primarily indoor exhibits for the harsh winters - so visitors would not have to pass the empty enclosures, for example, and could take a shorter visit.
In more recent years, the intention has slowly been to divide the zoo into four continental zones - Africa in the northwest, Asia in the northeast, and the Americas in the southwest, chiefly, but a lot of this progress has been stalled since
Great Bear Wildernass was complete. The ambitious plans drawn up over ten years ago suggested that the former Perching Bird House would be dismantled, and Feathers and Scales' area would be home to a larger combined building that would again contain both birds and reptiles. I would speculate a new exhibit of that type could talk about the evolution of reptiles into birds.
The problem today is that the zoo is too low on money to dismantle these historic buildings and the baboon habitat (or Bear Grotto) and has therefore converted them to staff buildings, and what remains is mostly non-charismatic species in the relatively simple terrariums. With the poorly bordered-up Bear Grottos, the second half of the zoo is almost entirely anchored by the childrens' area in the furthest southeast and the Americas' areas in the furthest southwest.
The current state of Brookfield is becoming a little sorry by now - it's a blessing it was a world-class institution
before it came upon such difficult times...
