Zoo #41: Weltvogelpark Walsrode, 31/7/2017
My dorm mate had asked what brought me to Hanover.
"I'm going to a bird park. It's pretty famous."
... "Oh, right." I don't think my interlocutor was wholly convinced. "And what else?"
No, that's pretty much it.
I'd like to start off by expressing my thanks to whoever it was that picked passerines as the Zoochat Challenge for this year, which will almost certainly be the only one in which I am ever competitive. It has drawn my attention towards birds that I would usually take very little notice of as I pursue my parrots and hornbills.
Now the roles are reversed. It's the birds that I once didn't bother looking for in the flight aviary that have me lingering about, holding out hope for a sudden flash of wings through the canopy. I'll never look down my nose at a laughing-thrush again.
I knew Walsrode was going to be central to my hopes of a once-off victory. After Hamburg I was sitting on 158, 24 behind Vision. ZTL had, after careful scrutiny, informed me that there were up to 54 species I didn't yet have that were known to be present. I knew I'd miss many but hoped to get perhaps 30, and take a modest lead.
I have learned, over the course of this now than two-thirds over (
) journey, that I am not quite the fully fledged zoo nerd. I adore zoos, and I still have plenty more to go. But for the most part I value a good night's sleep over getting to a zoo first thing in the morning, and doubly so after having endured Hamburg. So I decided against setting an alarm, put my $80 earplugs to good use and woke up comfortably in time to make the 9:51 train out to Walsrode. It would connect with the local bus and deposit me at the park around 11. If eight hours wasn't enough for a complete experience of Walsrode (and my 30 passerines) then so be it.
Deutsche Bahn is famous for its reliability and punctuality, so I guess it was pre-ordained that it would run late and I would miss the bus by one minute. There was nothing else for it but to walk the couple of kilometres, which pushed my arrival back to about 11:30, but I got a pleasant stroll through a Grimm Brothers-esque forestscape for my troubles. And I still had seven hours at the park before leaving slightly before closing time: my knee was getting grumpy and I also had to walk back to the station. It was a long day.
I collected an English map from the ticket desk, but to be honest I might have been better off without it: the wretched thing was incomplete, which I only discovered after trying and failing to locate the birds-of-paradise (I had assumed they'd be in the 'paradise hall', but that proved too logical), as well as the kiwi house. Neither were shown, and I almost missed the row of aviaries behind the parrot aviaries too. The reason for the omissions escapes me, but they were very annoying.
Anyway, I began in a paradise hall that didn't have birds of paradise, but plenty of other passerines: I was into double figures within 20 minutes, before the pace started to slow a lot. I've been lukewarm on 'bird houses' in Northern Hemisphere zoos. I'm used to outdoor aviaries in Australia, and I do think they are preferable, both as exhibits and as habitats. I don't enjoy seeing birds behind glass. Not an issue at Walsrode though; why don't more zoos keep more of their indoor birds in wire aviaries?
The big aviaries here - the flight one with, who'd have imagined, a variety of wading birds - and the two indoor walk-throughs are nice, but it's the dozens of planted outdoor exhibits that set it apart.
To be honest it's not a sense I had of Walsrode from the days, before I started planning this trip, when I would look through the gallery. Back then I was much more attracted to Jurong, which was not only much closer, and hence more plausibly reachable, but also seemingly had the grander, more ambitious exhibits. That's probably true, but Walsrode's smaller habitat aviaries have it covered, I think. So it depends what you like most, I guess.
And I like Walsrode very, very much. The sheer number of small and medium-sized aviaries gives it greater depth than Jurong, and while I wasn't rushed for time - I was able comfortably to circle back to favourite parts a couple of times - I can see how more patient people sometimes need to allocate two days to this place.
But it's not perfect. The penguin exhibit shows its age and is sub-par. I know penguins are probably the most expensive species to provide a good, enriched habitat for, but I'd like to see more than a relatively shallow and stagnant pool. It's a difficult one: it might be too costly to provide a good exhibit, but whereas a traditional zoo going out of penguins would simply lack a supporting cast member, for a bird park it'd be like going without giraffes.
The parrots (60 species!!!) were, as ever, unimaginatively displayed. I was talking about the aviaries here - empty branches, sand substrate, sizes ranging from generous to far too small - with a friend who keeps and trains cockatoos. He made the point that the destructive behaviours parrots are famous for are mostly because of boredom: create enriched enough environments and diets and they won't wreck your trees, and you can keep them in planted aviaries.
Even if that much is beyond Walsrode (and it shouldn't be: bird keeping is literally their core business), there's a lot they could do with the parrot aviaries. Plant bamboo to create some greenery that will grow fast enough to survive the onslaught. Plant creepers on at least some of the aviary floor: there are some that parrots find distasteful, so use those.
But I have a better idea for some of the biggest, most destructive species anyway. I wouldn't mind seeing the flight aviary - the biggest one I've seen in Europe, I think - halved, and turning over the second half to the big parrot species; the macaws, the cockatoos, the amazons and perhaps even the keas, subject to individual birds' behaviour, of course. I've never seen a big, mixed-parrot flight aviary and it's my avian holy grail. Walsrode could make it work.
But enough about what didn't please me, because this post will start to be mistaken as being critical. It's not, on the whole. I mean, how could I? I didn't see the kiwi - my only good viewing of this species was in a wholly inadequate exhibit in Osaka, alas - but I saw three birds-of-paradise species, three hummingbirds, two cocks-of-the-rocks, four couas, shoebill, kagu, horned parrot, Pesquet's parrot, vasa parrot, hawk-headed parrot, a tawny eagle and that's just the ones I knew were rare in captivity. I've seen most before, here or there (I'd never heard of the couas, though), but all in one place? There's only two places in the world with the desire - the interest - to do that. Both are precious.
And, to my delight, it seems many locals feel the same way. I sort of expect bird parks to be a bit of a stuffy, niche attraction - and my dorm mate in Hanover clearly agreed - but despite being a weekday there were hundreds of people there. Many were young couples or groups of young people.
Being so far from home, there's always a slight feeling of regret as I leave a zoo. I certainly hope - even plan - to return to Europe, but there are many places on this trip that I will only ever visit once. I dearly hope Walsrode isn't one.
) if I ever make a big European zoo trip in the distant future.
