CGSwans flies north for the winter

CGSwans said:
The Golden Swan for best swine exhibit goes to… Chester Zoo. I was leaning towards skipping this category altogether. It is so rare to see a pig exhibit that isn’t simply a patch of mud, and it’s hard to single out one mud patch as better than another mud patch. Then I went to Chester, where they somehow manage to maintain greenery in with their babirusa, not once but twice. Although, I admit that I remain ever so slightly suspicious, since I didn’t actually see a barbirusa. I’m just taking it on trust that they are really there, living in their miraculously grassy enclosures.
Click to expand...
Babirusa don't dig, apparently. Their snouts aren't adapted for churning up the ground unless it is muddy (i.e. they do wallow), and in the wild they feed off the ground not by digging up the ground. So in theory all Babirusa enclosures should be able to be kept green, except in the area given over to a wallow. I've only seen Babirusa in Asian zoos though, and they are always in bare enclosures.
 
CGSwans said:
This is an exhibit for what amounts to a filler species, but it’s so aesthetically perfect that it is an automatic selection for one of my nine slots.
Click to expand...

Funny thing is, Dromedary really aren't that much of a filler species over here in Europe - the ones at Tierpark Berlin are literally the only ones I have seen in a public collection with regular opening hours, and the only other ones I have seen were at Heythrop Zoo, which only has one or two open weekends a year.

CGSwans said:
But I simply can’t go past Chester’s enormous complex of several grassy, spacious yards. It’s what Chester’s elephant exhibit (which is what passes for a weakness at Chester) should be.
Click to expand...

...and those are merely the ones which are on-display - there are a few which are behind the scenes, too!

CGSwans said:
The Golden Swan for best mountain bovid exhibit goes to… Prague Zoo. Obviously. This one’s an absolute triumph of that most satisfying of exhibit design approaches: using the natural landscape to best advantage. There are several near-vertical cliff face exhibits along the ridge that separates the zoo in two, and you can take any one of them to present this award to. Nothing else even gets remotely close. I’d hate to be the keepers tasked with rounding one of the goats up.
Click to expand...

If you liked those enclosures, you would definitely have liked Innsbruck Alpenzoo and Highland Wildlife Park.

CGSwans said:
The closest other contender for this spot was the very similar chamois paddock at Munich, and that’s testament to how taken I was with Bavaria’s picture perfect standard of ungulate paddocks.
Click to expand...

I very much hope you meant to insert the words "exhibit for Mesopotamian Fallow Deer opposite the" between the words "similar" and "chamois" in your above quote :p otherwise we shall need to have a little chat about the difference between deer and bovids!
 
You've misunderstood. That was an award that could have gone to any ungulate exhibit that wasn't for a species specifically listed for another award. If I'd gone with the chamois I probably would have renamed both that one and the Prague one.
 
You probably should have called it the "Golden Swan for best miscellaneous ungulate exhibit" then :p
 
Haha. Maybe. Thing is, though, that six of the nine could have been called that (on reflection a hippo one was mandatory). There might not have been a camel award if not for the Tierpark, for example.
 
Theoretically you need only have widened the names of the Okapi and Mountain Bovid categories to "Giraffe" and "Bovid" to have pretty comprehensively covered even-toed hoofstock in any case.

As it stands the only groups you didn't cover are equids and tapirs, and I'd be hard-pushed to think of any exhibits you would have been likely to highlight for these groups. Personally I love the vast array of equid exhibits at Tierpark Berlin, but although I think you quite appreciated them I doubt you would think of them as worthy of particular salutation.
 
Thoughts in italics:

The Golden Swan for best hippo exhibit goes to… Berlin Zoo.
I've always found the land area at Berlin to be quite small (I used the word 'very' the first time I saw it), but I know it is much loved on this forum.You would have loved Dvur Kralove's, but it is totally unsuitable for winter use, and the recent death of the new male shows the limitations of a lack of seperate outdoor spaces.

The Golden Swan for best mountain bovid exhibit goes to… Prague Zoo.
With Helsinki's breathing down Prague's neck I think.

The Golden Swan for best deer exhibit goes to… Nuremberg Zoo
Sadly haven't visited. I thought Dortmund's Red deer enclosure was fantastic this summer, but I've never heard anyone mention it on here. Possibly the viewing is a little limited. I think surely the best deer exhibit complex is to be found in Prague, with just beats out the Berlin Tierpark due to more stylish presentation.
 
I'm sure of your awards would have been snapped up by Cabarceno if you had, had the chance to see it.
As a side note I would like to say thank you for taking the time in your busy schedule for all your mini reviews and comments, much appreciated.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
As it stands the only groups you didn't cover are equids and tapirs, and I'd be hard-pushed to think of any exhibits you would have been likely to highlight for these groups. Personally I love the vast array of equid exhibits at Tierpark Berlin, but although I think you quite appreciated them I doubt you would think of them as worthy of particular salutation.
Click to expand...

I think that's quite right. The 'generic' ungulate paddocks at Tierpark are all of a high standard, but apart from the camels they're not singularly spectacular.

FunkyGibbon said:
Thoughts in italics:

The Golden Swan for best hippo exhibit goes to… Berlin Zoo.
I've always found the land area at Berlin to be quite small (I used the word 'very' the first time I saw it), but I know it is much loved on this forum.You would have loved Dvur Kralove's, but it is totally unsuitable for winter use, and the recent death of the new male shows the limitations of a lack of seperate outdoor spaces.

The Golden Swan for best mountain bovid exhibit goes to… Prague Zoo.
With Helsinki's breathing down Prague's neck I think.

The Golden Swan for best deer exhibit goes to… Nuremberg Zoo
Sadly haven't visited. I thought Dortmund's Red deer enclosure was fantastic this summer, but I've never heard anyone mention it on here. Possibly the viewing is a little limited. I think surely the best deer exhibit complex is to be found in Prague, with just beats out the Berlin Tierpark due to more stylish presentation.
Click to expand...

Berlin's exhibit isn't large, no, but there's not a lot of depth in this category.

Helsinki is good but not particularly close, no. Prague stands alone, for size but also because of the ridiculous gradient.

Prague has a great complex for temperate climate ungulates but no single exhibit matches the standard of Nuremberg.


kiang said:
I'm sure of your awards would have been snapped up by Cabarceno if you had, had the chance to see it.
As a side note I would like to say thank you for taking the time in your busy schedule for all your mini reviews and comments, much appreciated.
Click to expand...

lintworm said:
If you would have had the time to get to Doue-la-Fontaine, you would have seen that the one in Blijdorp is a cheap rip-off of their okapi enclosure....

Dybowski deer, a subspecies of sika ;)
Click to expand...

Cabarceno and Doue keep popping up as big misses, don't they? Perhaps it's no bad thing that they're not so terribly far from each other.
 
This may be a good point to remind readers of this excellent thread of @CGSwans's blog, mentioned a few pages back. He himself may be too modest to mention it again, but it is brilliant - Brysonesque in its wry observations of European quirks. And it's put me off the thought of ever staying in a hostel, ever, anywhere (I'd rather sleep in my car, @snowleopard - style, than endure the sort of experience enjoyed by @CGSwans in Amsterdam).
 
sooty mangabey said:
This may be a good point to remind readers of this excellent thread of @CGSwans's blog, mentioned a few pages back. He himself may be too modest to mention it again, but it is brilliant - Brysonesque in its wry observations of European quirks. And it's put me off the thought of ever staying in a hostel, ever, anywhere (I'd rather sleep in my car, @snowleopard - style, than endure the sort of experience enjoyed by @CGSwans in Amsterdam).
Click to expand...

You're too kind, as usual. As for hostels... just wait until I get up to writing about Dublin. It's a good thing that disaster came in my last hostel.
 
CGSwans said:
Cabarceno and Doue keep popping up as big misses, don't they? Perhaps it's no bad thing that they're not so terribly far from each other.
Click to expand...

I think those two collections, along with Dublin, Tallin, Pairi Daiza and Bristol are the only notable absences from your tour. Jersey and Loro Parque are also big misses but being on islands were probably too much effort to get to.
At least you've left some collections for your next trip up north! ;)
 
Brum said:
I think those two collections, along with Dublin, Tallin, Pairi Daiza and Bristol are the only notable absences from your tour. Jersey and Loro Parque are also big misses but being on islands were probably too much effort to get to.
At least you've left some collections for your next trip up north! ;)
Click to expand...

I think Tallinn may qualify as a significant zoo, but there are many, many zoos like Gelsenkirchen, Colchester or Bern which are far, far better.
 
Chlidonias said:
Islands are difficult.

They're surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water.
Click to expand...

For someone (CGSwans) who wasn't flying after landing in Lisbon my point stands! ;)

FunkyGibbon said:
I think Tallinn may qualify as a significant zoo, but there are many, many zoos like Gelsenkirchen, Colchester or Bern which are far, far better.
Click to expand...

It may not be better than the above mentioned collections but it is the major collection in Estonia. And it has that world class collection of caprids too... :)
 
sooty mangabey said:
This may be a good point to remind readers of this excellent thread of @CGSwans's blog, mentioned a few pages back. He himself may be too modest to mention it again, but it is brilliant - Brysonesque in its wry observations of European quirks. And it's put me off the thought of ever staying in a hostel, ever, anywhere (I'd rather sleep in my car, @snowleopard - style, than endure the sort of experience enjoyed by @CGSwans in Amsterdam).
Click to expand...

Here is that CGSwans blog:

A wonky tour of Europe: August 2017

I would MUCH rather sleep in a minivan than in any of the crazy hostels that @CGSwans has been hanging out in...yikes! Also, I still cannot wrap my head around the idea of not driving all around Europe as it would be so convenient to have a place to store personal items like extra clothes (and zoo maps!) without carrying a backpack that is designed for trekking in the Andes. Maybe I'm just used to the North American idea of driving absolutely everywhere, as judging from my past holidays I could take a car all around Europe and it would still not even be half the driving that I usually do on my mega-zoo trips. :)
 
sooty mangabey said:
Brysonesque in its wry observations of European quirks
Click to expand...
and occasionally just as rudely dismissive. Example?
"(...)it’s cute how Germany hasn’t let a high profile lack of recent victories deter them from having a victory column."
Peacefully uniting a country that was brutally separated for decades is a grand victory; that's why this is celebrated in Germany today.

Beating Brazil 7:1 wasn't bad, either...
 
  • Like
Reactions: MRJ
snowleopard said:
Here is that CGSwans blog:

A wonky tour of Europe: August 2017

I would MUCH rather sleep in a minivan than in any of the crazy hostels that @CGSwans has been hanging out in...yikes! Also, I still cannot wrap my head around the idea of not driving all around Europe as it would be so convenient to have a place to store personal items like extra clothes (and zoo maps!) without carrying a backpack that is designed for trekking in the Andes. Maybe I'm just used to the North American idea of driving absolutely everywhere, as judging from my past holidays I could take a car all around Europe and it would still not even be half the driving that I usually do on my mega-zoo trips. :)
Click to expand...

The thing I should say in defence of hostels is that I really did only write about the bad experiences because they made much better stories. There were plenty of really good places - the ones in Lisbon, Zurich, Genoa, Vienna, Budapest, Rome, Dubrovnik, Split, Prague (bugopalypse aside), Wroclaw, Tallinn, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Hanover, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam (second-time lucky) and Edinburgh - and if I've not emphasised them it's simply because they didn't produce any of the quirky anecdotes that I like to write about.

Batto said:
and occasionally just as rudely dismissive. Example?
"(...)it’s cute how Germany hasn’t let a high profile lack of recent victories deter them from having a victory column."
Peacefully uniting a country that was brutally separated for decades is a grand victory; that's why this is celebrated in Germany today.

Beating Brazil 7:1 wasn't bad, either...
Click to expand...

Setting aside the irony here, if you can't tell that that's deliberately tongue in cheek, that's on you, not me. I have made similar jibes about France and Russia, which perhaps don't bother you because you are not French or Russian. Nor did you note where I wrote that Germany deserves immense credit for how it engages with, rather than seeking to minimise, the most horrible aspects of its history.

Can't please everybody though, I guess.
 
What irony - a threadbare WW 1 & 2 reference? On me, or rather, on my family, is the loss of family members in both conflicts. If I were French or Russian with a similar family history, I doubt that I would have reacted any differently; however, I haven't read that section (yet?). I do appreciate jibes - but not such a coarse, consequential and eventually incorrect one.
I did read your kowtow regarding contemporary Germany's coming to terms with its history from 1933 - 1945 ("most horrible aspects of its history"). So was this just meant to justify your previous jibe? You're way better than that.
And no, you can't please everyone. But you can at least try to understand why some might find such jibes inappropriate.

Sorry for going OT. Please continue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top