Visitors to Birds of Paradise

I little late with my blog post again but better late than never :-)

Last week I was really pleased to be on the bird section of the zoo. I haven't been on birds for ages and I always enjoy working on the section.

I started off by going to the Toucan House (which really needs to be renamed as it only contains one toucan these days. I think I introduced you to the toucan the last time I was on the section. This time, not only did I get to clean out her enclosure, but I also hand fed her some grapes.

Despite reassurances that they had settled down somewhat, I refused to go into the enclosure with the sun conures; after being attacked twice now, I have no desire to get bitten again. Instead, I cleaned out the bats which I thought was much more fun ;-) I was warned that they will urinate on you, but I got in and out no problem at all, much to my relief.

The rest of the morning (and part of the afternoon) was more or less spent making up the foods. Although I do quite enjoy it, it does take a long time and by the end, I must confess I do get a little bored of cutting up apples. I also got to watch a bit of one of the shows - This is Stella, an eagle owl who was found living wild on an estate (living off the local cat population!).

In the afternoon, one of the other volunteers and I got to go and feed the penguins, who took this opportunity to all go for a swim (and they never go in the water). This makes feeding difficult, as we're not supposed to throw the fish in the water (in case they don't get eaten), however we stuck to putting them in the shallow part of the pool where we could easily get them out again.

At the end of the day, some visitors were brought to the Birds of Paradise section. The head primate/reptile keeper, thought it would be a nice idea to bring his new giant tortoises out of quarantine for the first time to enjoy a bit of sunshine and the fresh grass. The male tortoise wandered off almost immediately and happily set about eating the grass, the female was less sure and after a lot of sitting there, looking decidedly nervous anytime anyone went near her, she eventually headed towards a nearby tree.

 'Lancelot'*

 'Guinevere'*

*They don't actually have names yet, but one of the other volunteers and I came up with these two - The reptile keeper was less impressed. ;-)

The tortoises are about 12 and a half years old and were apparently living in someones garden until they got too big and were given to the zoo. As you can see from the photos they're already quite big but are expected to become a third bigger in size before they are full grown.

So here is my blog post for the day, I've finally got the photos up which go with the post. I wonder what section I'll be on tomorrow...