I visited the Decin zoo for the first time last month. Unfortunately it was a cold, dark and rainy morning, so I didn't get the most out of my visit and a lot of animals were indoors/ barely visible.
Still, I quite liked Decin.
First of all the walk to the zoo from the station provides you with amazing views of the town.
The zoo itself is nothing special, but it has a few interesting things to offer. Some animals like the bears, fishing cats , lynxes, wild boars, wild caprids and crested macaques have pretty spacious enclosures. Only a few I found to be quite bad (margay, ruffed lemur, snowy owl, demoiselle crane enclosures are quite small)
I quite liked their collection of European carnivores. Although some were no shows (wolverine, fox, wild cat) I did get to enjoy some very active badgers all well as the European mink. Their collection of European owls and raptors is also quite noteworthy. The zoo also offers some nice exotic species, like margay, jaguarundi, brush-tailed possum (not seen) visayan warty pig (not seen), Visayan spotte deer (not seen) and Mexican spider monkey.
The bird house is tiny, and If I wouldn't have already known about them, I would have been very surprised to find not 1 but 2 species of bird-of-paradise here. It was only my second time seeing the Magnificent Bird-of-paradise (I saw an adult male)
I think I spent about two hours in the zoo before going to their secondary location, called Paradise Islands (Rajske Ostrovy). The folder made it seem more interesting than it is ('biggest saltwater aquarium in the area' doesn't mean that much) but it's still good for an additional 30 minutes. Besides a few tropical saltwater tanks and a couple of terraria with various reptiles, the main draw here is a walk-in nocturnal enclosure for pygmy slow loris.
For those who are interested, I updated Zootierliste for both the zoo and Paradise Islands. Photo's of the Paradise Island have been added to the zoochat gallery (I might add a few photo's of the zoo later as well.)
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ZOO DOČASNĚ UZAVŘENA!