Birds, lemurs and otters

Yesterday was May Day Bank Holiday here in the UK, so that meant a day off work at the zoo.

Back to normal today, and on checking my emails I had a few changes to do with some bird ID's. One species, Asian glossy starlings had been moved from one aviary to another and one species removed to an off show area.

I had already prepared and printed the Asian glossy starling ID's a while back (3 of them).. all I had to do was trim them to size, laminate, hole punch and bang eyelets into them before putting them on display - the last part I did after lunch.

However I had to first go across to the aviary in which they are kept as I needed to check on the layout of the 'book' of ID's that they will be presented in. Was it a left or right hand page.. the difference was important as when I laminate I have to leave a strip of laminate free, either to the left or right, in which to place the holes for the eyelets. Once checked I headed back to the studio to get the ID's ready. I noticed on my way back that another aviary had its ID removed and it was empty of not only a bird but of all 'dressing' such as branches, food bowls and substrate. This was a different aviary to the one the email had said but both housed the same species and the ID was still on the aviary I had been told about - was there a mix up on the email? I needed to speak to the Bird Section. I contacted Nigel, Curator of Birds and he explained that the two birds (of the same species - Sulawesi quail doves) were moved from their respective aviaries to an off show holding area to be paired up.

This would mean that I now needed to put up four 'blank' ID's to fill the holes left by the signs of the birds that were moved; two for the Sulawesi's and two for the starlings. I had only two blanks on file so I had to make a few more of them also.

I got the blanks up and removed the unwanted IDs for these two species before lunch. Doesn't seem much for a morning's work, does it!

In the afternoon I headed over to the indoor aviary that now houses the Asian glossy starlings and put the ID pages in the three seperate books. The process is quite fiddley removing nuts from the U-bolts holding the ID's in place on a wooden board, which means me working by the sense of touch in a narrow gap on the underside of this board - often full of cobwebs! However, such unpleasantness is balanced by all the beautiful birds that I get to see as I work. It was lovely in there today, with the sun streaming through the roof windows it was bright and very toasty, temperature-wise. The two sunbitterns were down in the little stream that runs through the walkthrough aviary... these birds are so elegant and fragile looking with beautifully marked plumage of dark and light mottled browns - hiding the huge 'eyespots' on its wings that it shows to warn off would be attackers.

As I put the last starling ID in the last book I noticed that one of the other IDs in it was damaged and water had got in under the laminate. It would need replacing; I checked all the IDs in the three books and luckily no others were in need of replacing.

Also on my way back to the studio I saw some keepers wading out to one of the lake islands (one that had been without any animals on it for a while). They were carrying across a couple of pet carriers. I stopped and had a chat. They had a new male ring-tail lemur in with the group housed in the lemur walk through and had removed two of the older males previously in the group so the new male could settle in with his new ladies without encountering opposition from the 'old boys'. It was these old boys that were now going to live on the island. Sometime ago, I had removed the ID holder from the post in front of this island. Now it needed to go back up and a new sign made for the lemurs.

Back in the studio I printed off IDs for the black hornbill for the indoor aviary and one for the lemurs. These were laminated (the hornbill had to also have eyelets put in ) and then I was back out to first screw in the ID holder mounted on a T-bar back on the post (with Anna's help to make sure it was in straight.) and then to replace the hornbill ID.

The lemurs would probably be kept in to settle to their new home until Thursday, so at first I didn't put their ID up. But as a keeper pointed out the public are able to see them through their 'hut' window so I popped back out to put it in.

Passing by the otter enclosure I stopped to watch them, they are quite often more active late in the afternoon and today was no exception; they were having a 'relaxed' game of chase by the looks of it. The keepers and garden staff had recently revamped their enclosure, giving it a bit of a make over. It looks so much better as it had got a little tired and overgrown. Now the otters have different substrates to run over and new plantings to investigate and run around. They seemed to be having great fun.

Maybe tomorrow I can get back to that spider I've almost finished.