Hamerton Zoo Park Hamerton Zoo News 2012

Visited yesterday - enjoyed the gloriously unseasonal weather as myself and Hel walked a 10 mile round trip there from the nearest bus-stop along a lovely country lane!

And the animals were enjoying the glorious weather too - I saw everything I aimed to, with the exception of the rusty-spotted cats which are still unfortunately offshow a year after their arrival. Almost everything was basking in the warm and pleasant March(!) sunshine.

The jaguarundi seemed to dislike me - hissed every single time I passed their enclosure ;) though of course this meant I got some excellent photographs of them. The oncillas, corsac foxes and southern aardwolf were both very active too. The eastern aardwolves were very inactive, but fortunately for me their inactivity was in the middle of their enclosure fast asleep!

All in all, I strongly recommend Hamerton to everyone - it really is worth the extra effort in reaching it, and if you pick a day with good weather the walk required if you don't have your own transport is really nothing :) especially if, as we found, the fields of the surrounding area are rife with kestrels, hare, pheasants and red kite!
 
TeaLovingDave said:
as we found, the fields of the surrounding area are rife with kestrels, hare, pheasants and red kite!
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I was amazed by the kites last time - four showed up on the 6-mile or so drive from the A14 to the entrance.
 
I'd love to get a photograph of a wild hare, if only to get my life list past domestic rabbit for lagomorphs photographed!
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Visited yesterday - enjoyed the gloriously unseasonal weather as myself and Hel walked a 10 mile round trip there from the nearest bus-stop along a lovely country lane!

And the animals were enjoying the glorious weather too - I saw everything I aimed to, with the exception of the rusty-spotted cats which are still unfortunately offshow a year after their arrival. Almost everything was basking in the warm and pleasant March(!) sunshine.

The jaguarundi seemed to dislike me - hissed every single time I passed their enclosure ;) though of course this meant I got some excellent photographs of them. The oncillas, corsac foxes and southern aardwolf were both very active too. The eastern aardwolves were very inactive, but fortunately for me their inactivity was in the middle of their enclosure fast asleep!

All in all, I strongly recommend Hamerton to everyone - it really is worth the extra effort in reaching it, and if you pick a day with good weather the walk required if you don't have your own transport is really nothing :) especially if, as we found, the fields of the surrounding area are rife with kestrels, hare, pheasants and red kite!
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I visited yesterday too, a first time, and overall was pretty impressed, only no shows for me were the oncilla & pudu, & i went back to the oncilla several times so you were lucky!Was particularly pleased to find the tree pocupine awake and a maned wolf, thought the corsac foxes were great, hadn't realised just how small they were I missed a few things on my first circuit, the giant anteater, which i finally saw t about 230 as i was leaving, the aardwolf which was much more active than the others by the tree porcupine, flamingos in the donkey stables, zebra yard by the overflow car park, but the best of the lot were the bengal slow loris,very active in the well lit 'Reptile House' shed which I ignored the first time round since I assumed there wasn't much worth seeing there, given the size!
I would echo the recommendation, but have a few adverse observations:the cassowary have a great enclosure, but the viewing area is awful, as it only allows viewing of probably less than a quarter of it! I only saw it behind the fence of the spurred tortoise/pudu enclosure! The first 2 lemur(aviary like) enclosures seemed ridiculously small given the size of the wallaby paddock surrounding them and some of the other larger primate's enclosures weren't great either, I'd rather they'd built the new vulture/marabou stork enclosure for the gibbons, its 20 times the size of. their current enclosures.

Overall though I'm glad I visited over other collections of similar distance I'd visited before (paradise wp & banham were my other options having been to whipsnade twice & colchester recently) , it is well worth a visit for several rarities & I will definitely return!
 
Some excellent news from the Hamerton facebook page - a UK first breeding of Tayra!

Hamerton Facebook Page said:
Some of our regular visitors may of noticed that work on a new section of the zoo behind the tigers came to an abrupt stop on 3rd April! The little bundle in the straw is a baby Tayra and we have been told this is the first Tayra to be born in the UK!

This little boy is doing very well, and growing extremely fast. His eyes are not yet open, so mum is constantly keeping a close watch on him.

Once he is a bit bigger and the weather improves we hope to resume work on Oncilla, Rusty Spotted Cat, Eastern Aardwolf and ofcourse the Tayra's larger pen.
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For how long did Southport hold tayra? I saw a single animal in the early 1990s. I'm not sure Kilverstone bred a number of their carnivore species, so I can well imagine one or two well-looked after animals living long lives there without ever breeding successfully. I know Kilverstone bred olingo, but I've never heard of them breeding tayra or grison, which they also held.
 
Arrivals and departures:

0:1 Binturong has arrived from Praha

1:0 Cheetah (Bash) has returned from loan to Parc Paradiso in Belgium. In exchange for his return Hamerton has sent two females the other way

0:0:5 Reindeer born
 
Nisha said:
Arrivals and departures:

0:1 Binturong has arrived from Praha

1:0 Cheetah (Bash) has returned from loan to Parc Paradiso in Belgium. In exchange for his return Hamerton has sent two females the other way

0:0:5 Reindeer born
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Always good to have a bit more diversity injected into UK binturong populations :)
 
Looking through the pictures, noticed the staff have contact, even holding and cuddling cheetah. If the zoo is serious about breeding cheetah and past experience tells me that this handling stuff will not and does not help, then surely putting aside ego and pride, along with some gate money is far better thing to do? White Tigers??? again what value apart from gate money does this bring?
 
depends on how the gate money is spent realy, i mean is there realy much difference in what species of tiger a zoo holds? nothing is going to be releaed back into the wild, so if a zoo holds white tigers and brings in more money and that money is then used for things like in-situ conservation or the numerous tiger conservation efforts than white tigers can be of more benifit than any other species.
 
After seeing pictures of the raccoons they have a very dark stripe over their shoulders and down their spines, is this a unusual race of raccoon or is it a colour mutation?
 
stubeanz said:
After seeing pictures of the raccoons they have a very dark stripe over their shoulders and down their spines, is this a unusual race of raccoon or is it a colour mutation?
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The e-newsletter states they are not a melanistic mutation , just a darker colour variant. No unusual race is mentioned either.
 
Hamerton has seen their servals have a litter of 4 kittens, born on 17 July.

Full details and photograph are on the Facebook page.
 
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