After hearing such good things about this place, I finally made the two hour train journey yesterday (two previous attempts had been thwarted by rain).
It really is an easy collection to get to, the walk from Honeybourne station is barely 5 minutes along excellent paths. There is also a Co-op on the way which is handy for food supplies.
Highlights for the day were definitely the Golden Jackals, which were very much smaller than I was expecting. They didn't seem much bigger than a large fox, but definitely with a more wolf-y stockiness. They were great and I spent a lot of time watching them across the day. Other highlights were rather charming American Beavers, Pardine Genet, a silver-morph Red Fox, a Fennec Fox (which I'm always happy to see), nice active Tayra and a sleeping Virginia Possum. Even the dinosaur area was pretty good.
This collection reminded me most of Wingham. There is a lot of wood and wire, but unlike Wingham it didn't leave me cold, and I left feeling content rather than sad. Maybe it's because ATW doesn't have anything particularly large. The largest wild mammals they have are a pair of Chapman's Zebra (nicely mixed with noisy Guineafowl) and some 'Bactrian' Camels in decent sized paddocks. The jackals have a nice fenced grassy area with a pond and some trees and shrubs for cover. The genets, raccoons and coati have well furnished wood-and-wire enclosures. (By comparison I thought that many of Wingham's enclosures felt quite empty and bare, especially for the larger cat species)
ATW is a zoo where every building should be investigated. The map is pretty bad, but that worked in my favour, as I could happily stumble upon unexpected animals! One part of the map just showed meerkats, so it was lovely to also find Cusimanse and Fennec Fox. In another area, looking at some parrots, out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, and there was a jackal stalking through some long grass. And if I hadn't gone in one if the farm barns (oh it'll just be rabbits), I would have missed the Virginia Possum!
I did like how ATW clearly explained the histories of some of the animals that had less than ideal past lives, often as pets, and the resulting health issues which this may have left them with (eg the parrots with overgrown beaks). A sign at one owl explained that it had been pinioned long before arriving at the zoo, what pinioning meant, and how the zoo was enriching its life in other ways to make up for its lack of flight.
It's definitely not a full-day zoo, but it's a very good half-day one. I ended up spending 5 hours there because my trains were only once every two hours, and I'd much rather spend time watching animals than kicking my heels at a train station.
So, to sum up, I really liked this zoo. It's a nice mixture of zoo and farm, with some nice oddities to keep the zoo-nerd happy. It may lack any cat species, but three species of canine more than makes up for it
I've taken plenty of pictures, but these are still on my camera, and will be uploaded in due course.
It really is an easy collection to get to, the walk from Honeybourne station is barely 5 minutes along excellent paths. There is also a Co-op on the way which is handy for food supplies.
Highlights for the day were definitely the Golden Jackals, which were very much smaller than I was expecting. They didn't seem much bigger than a large fox, but definitely with a more wolf-y stockiness. They were great and I spent a lot of time watching them across the day. Other highlights were rather charming American Beavers, Pardine Genet, a silver-morph Red Fox, a Fennec Fox (which I'm always happy to see), nice active Tayra and a sleeping Virginia Possum. Even the dinosaur area was pretty good.
This collection reminded me most of Wingham. There is a lot of wood and wire, but unlike Wingham it didn't leave me cold, and I left feeling content rather than sad. Maybe it's because ATW doesn't have anything particularly large. The largest wild mammals they have are a pair of Chapman's Zebra (nicely mixed with noisy Guineafowl) and some 'Bactrian' Camels in decent sized paddocks. The jackals have a nice fenced grassy area with a pond and some trees and shrubs for cover. The genets, raccoons and coati have well furnished wood-and-wire enclosures. (By comparison I thought that many of Wingham's enclosures felt quite empty and bare, especially for the larger cat species)
ATW is a zoo where every building should be investigated. The map is pretty bad, but that worked in my favour, as I could happily stumble upon unexpected animals! One part of the map just showed meerkats, so it was lovely to also find Cusimanse and Fennec Fox. In another area, looking at some parrots, out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, and there was a jackal stalking through some long grass. And if I hadn't gone in one if the farm barns (oh it'll just be rabbits), I would have missed the Virginia Possum!
I did like how ATW clearly explained the histories of some of the animals that had less than ideal past lives, often as pets, and the resulting health issues which this may have left them with (eg the parrots with overgrown beaks). A sign at one owl explained that it had been pinioned long before arriving at the zoo, what pinioning meant, and how the zoo was enriching its life in other ways to make up for its lack of flight.
It's definitely not a full-day zoo, but it's a very good half-day one. I ended up spending 5 hours there because my trains were only once every two hours, and I'd much rather spend time watching animals than kicking my heels at a train station.
So, to sum up, I really liked this zoo. It's a nice mixture of zoo and farm, with some nice oddities to keep the zoo-nerd happy. It may lack any cat species, but three species of canine more than makes up for it
I've taken plenty of pictures, but these are still on my camera, and will be uploaded in due course.
