Chester Zoo

Being controversial here, not everyone will agree with our views, but here goes....

Last week we went up to Chester and spent a day at the Zoo. Now as I've probably posted before we are not huge Zoo fans, but after watching Secret Life of the Zoo on C4 and the good way that the Zoo is portrayed we thought we would give it one more go!

Our big mistake was that when we arranged a Hotel for the previous night, thanks to a great Groupon offer, but we forgot, when we booked it, that it would be in the Easter holidays so lots of children, not that that's a bad thing for the Zoo, just for us, when you are trying to look at the animals.

Having said that there were some incredibly well behaved and interested children there.

Anyway on the whole it wasn't bad, although some of the enclosures looked a lot smaller than on the television, especially the Chimps enclosure. After being lucky enough to see so many animals in the wild, it just didn't feel right, especially when we saw the Sumatran Tiger pacing up and down along the fence. Now we know how endangered the Sumatran Tiger is and that the Zoo breeding programmes are vital to its survival, but it still makes you so sad to see them like that.

Indeed that goes for a lot of the Animals. Another case in point are the walk through aviaries, which are fabulous and make you feel as if you are almost in the wild, but in fact the flying area is actually very small, but again many of the birds are red-listed, so it's a huge dilemma. I don't have an answer.

Towards the end of our visit we came across some small aviaries, all next to each other, containing a variety of Owls. Now an Owl of always wanted to see in the wild and would go to Finland or Norway to see is the Great Grey Owl and to see this fantastic bird for the first time in a tiny (relatively) aviary was just awful.

I think this will be our last visit to a Zoo, as we find it too upsetting, although I see no alternative for some of the animals if they are to survive and the conservation side of the Zoo needs the income from people through the gate to keep the breeding programmes going.

I'm not going to add any photos to this post, but I have put them on Flickr, here's the link if you want to have a look;

Chester Zoo Photos

A Lovely Sunny April Afternoon at Upton Warren

After a month devoid of birding for various reasons, we made a welcome return to Upton Warren on Thursday. It was great to be out and the weather was marvellous although a tad cool in a couple of the hides.

We visited all parts of the reserve starting with the Flashes mainly to get our first views of the returning Avocets,

and Little Ringed Plover,

The Shelduck were also looking splendid in the sun.

The birds today all stayed quite distant from the hide so good photo opportunities were limited. Other distant birds at the Flashes were Stock Dove, Gadwall, Shoveler, Lapwing, Mallard,Tufted Duck, Black-headed Gull, Canada Geese, Coot and a couple of Oystercatchers. A couple of Buzzards put in an appearance over the far hill side, briefly causing some excitement among the rest, but that was about it.

So we wandered (drove, much too muddy along the Salwarp!) over to the Moors Pools.
We started at the New Hide, this was pretty quiet, just some Tufted Duck, Coot and Mallard on the water, Blue and Great Tits, Chaffinch and a Bullfinch on the feeders. We sauntered (trying to use different verbs instead of 'walked'!!) up to the Lapwing hide and had coffee (this was our second)
Seeing a couple of Lesser Redpoll on the feeders at Lifestyles on the way.

From the Lapwing Hide we added a single Cormorant, some Teal, another pair of Oystercatchers, Little Grebe, Great Crested Grebe and a young Fox!, (gave a pair of Canada Geese a bit of a scare, before disappearing back into the reeds). We eventually found after much scanning two Snipe in the scrubby area in front of the Sand Martin box, that made our day as it's one of our favourite birds.

We now strolled back, purchasing a couple of Goose Eggs on the way and continued to the concrete hide. Here a Gadwall gave me a couple of nice shots,

as did a Dunnock

and a Reed Bunting

Finally from the tower hide a pair of Tufted Duck gave me a nice-ish photo,

So a very nice afternoon totalling 43 species in all. I haven't mentioned them all of course. We then completed a lovely afternoon with Afternoon Tea at Webbs, courtesy of my cousin Jane and family, who bought us this for a significant birthday!