I managed to visit both Southwicks and Lupa today. I was going to aim for Forest Park as well but I was a little late to Southwicks and ended up spending more time than planned at both collections (also Forest Park closes at 4 instead of 5 like I thought it did and I wouldn't have made it there until 3:15ish).
Southwicks Zoo I found to be much better than I had been led to believe in the past. However, I still had a good deal of problems with it including a good few bad primate enclosures (as well as several good ones to be fair), lots of parrots on sticks, a pretty small giraffe enclosure, several small herp terrariums, and generic big cats including white tigers. Additionally I noted that both the young Schmidt's Guenons and Ring-Tailed Lemurs were capable of escaping their enclosures. Obviously these things happen but the issue lies in the fact that the zoo is well aware of the problem but has little interest in doing something about it, electing instead to simply put up signs asking people not to bother them until they go back inside the cages on their own... On a positive note, though, most of the hoofstock enclosures were very good, especially the African Plains field. They also have one of the better New England collections with highlights of Schmidt's Guenon, Wolf's Guenon, Black-Crested Mangabey, White-Throated Capuchin, Northern Tamandua, Brazilian Tapir, Vicuña, Formosan Sika Deer, Lesser Flamingo, Japanese Pond Turtle, Five-Keeled Spiny-Tailed Iguana, one of the largest giant tortoises I've ever seen, and the only Great Apes exhibited outdoors with their chimps. I do wonder, though, what situation many of these less cold weather tolerant species find themselves in during the winter seasons. I noted very small indoor quarters for most of the animals and there's only one indoor exhibit that can be open year-round. Due to all of these things, I'm going to leave RWPZ as the best zoo in New England but after that I'm not sure where to place it compared to zoos like FPZ and Beardsley.
As for Lupa Zoo, I found this to be a relatively decent zoos but there are some definite glaring problems. The collection is a random mix of species from all over and some of the enclosures are designed weird with stuff like decorative bird houses thrown in. A decent amount of the enclosures are completely empty, though these are mainly the worse ones so that's a relief. The zoo seems to not like signage either as most of the animals are either unmarked entirely or misidentified (Scimitar-Horned Oryx signed a Beisa, macaws signed as amazons, etc.), with several of the existing signs clearly being very old and weather worn. The majority of the primate enclosures range from just passable to way too small, with several other small mammal (particularly the indoor ones), bird, and the Asiatic Black Bear enclosure being way less than desirable. The other carnivore enclosures were some of the better ones in the zoo. Some hoofstock yards were a bit small but nothing too bad and most were fine. I did noticed a lot of the hoofstock and some primates were held as single animals and often came up to the fence to fed whenever visitors came by as well. Their lynx and Serval kitten were very aggressive towards everyone who came up to their enclosures, too, though I don't blame them as several people kept harassing them.. In terms of unique species they keep Mouflon (don't know ssp), several Kinkajou, Geoffroy's Spider Monkey, several tamandua (their sign read "Southern & Northern Lesser Anteater" but I think it's just a mixed ssp pair as one individual is lacking the black and tan coloration the other one has), Hoffmann's Two-Toed Sloth, Red-Handed Tamarin, Common Brown Lemur, Three-Striped Night-Monkey, Brazilian Short-Tailed Opossum, Crab-Eating Macaque, Binturong, Brazilian Porcupine (looked a bit off for one, though), Common Eland, Siberian Lynx, and Asiatic Black Bear. They also keep a "Zedonk" and there were various parrots not identified to species-level that I need to try and figure out. This zoo is definitely at the bottom of my list currently for NE collections, but this is more due to the others just being so much better as oppose to this one being crap.
~Thylo
