4th - 6th March

Monday 4th

After returning the dust sheet and paints to maintenance from the last couple of week's mural painting I popped across the zoo to the Flamingo Paddock to check on the male ruff's plumage. I have to change the ID sign over when they go into breeding plumage as they look so different. I'm keeping a weekly eye on this, as last year the males started growing their ruff feathers earlier than the previous year. As the birds are maturing (we had them when they were quite young adult birds) it seems they are coming into breeding condition earlier. I guess this will level out once they reach a certain age. Last year it was the end of April, so I'm trying to be prepared just in case they change even earlier than last year.

Now that all is done on the giant squid mural I can get back to the illustration I started before Christmas; which is of a short-snouted seahorse Hippocampus hippocampus. I had got the black background and a base coat of one colour on the seahorse body, so now it was time to finish it. The reference I have is very unsatisfactory in that I had little luck getting images off the internet for that specific species in the colour mode ours are in and with all the details I need for head, tail, fins body markings etc. The photo's I had taken of the animals at the zoo were poor due to the very low light levels of the tank they are kept in and observing them for such details isn't helped by the low light and the fact that they like to hide and curl up. So I struggled a bit getting the colours etc I wanted.

Tuesday 5th

What a beautiful day! The sun graced us with its presence all day and it was quite warm. As I walked in this morning and passed the meerkat enclosure they were all out standing on various bits in their outside area to get the full benefit of the sun's warming rays.

They are just so cute..... had to take a few piccies of them!

First mission of the day was to go and have another look at the seahorses.... so camera in hand I went to the Seal and Penguin Coasts exhibit, where the seahorses are kept in a tank in the underground area. On my way I had to take this piccie of a wood pigeon... just made me smile that it was sat on the huge stag beetle sculpture....

I attempted to get more reference pictures of the seahorse and to have another look at them again... but once again they were mostly hidden and curled up, so no chance of getting any better images or observations. So back to the painting and taking educated guesses on a lot of it. I persevered through the day and by just before 5pm I got it done and headed over to the off show fish rooms to get it checked by Grier, a keeper on the Ectotherm Section (cold-blooded animal). It passed muster with no changes to be made. Phew!

I had a little break during the day, as I was struggling with the seahorse and needed to rest my eyes from it for a while; so I helped Anna, my colleague the graphic designer. She has to change the font and the overall size of the ID signs for Bug World. Our Line Manager has selected a number of fonts and put them to a collective vote by the Education staff to see what works best for readability. As there are a number of ID documents still in the old design application software of Quark and Freehand (I am in the long process of converting them all) I sat at the computer for an hour or so converting 7 invertebrate ID documents to Illustrator (design software application). This also involved me nipping over to Bug World to check what animals were currently on show, so that Anna need only update those to the new format.

On my way back from getting the seahorse checked at the end of the day I walked back round the zoo the long way, as it was still beautifully sunny and the light was lovely and low. It sometimes enables you to see and notice things you may pass every day for the last 17 years in a different way. This was the case as I passed the rockery garden area.. the light shining through an evergreen's thick foliage caught the bark of the trunk... just enough for me to think.. 'that looks different'. I bent to look up under the foliage and saw a beautifully lit array of trunk and branches, with warm reddish colours and purple blue shadows. I was so taken with it ... yes I took a photo!

Last job of the day was to scan in and colour correct the image of the seahorse ready to be put on its ID document tomorrow.

Wednesday 6th

This morning was supposed to be my sketching morning but it was drizzly and cold and grey, quite a dramatic change from yesterday's lovely sunshine. So I put my sketching off until the afternoon. Instead I  was back on the computer to put the image of the seahorse on its sign and add the text and pic of a greater pipefish too, as there was also at least one in the same tank. Once that was printed, trimmed to size, laminated and trimmed to size again I could put it up on section. I also had to put up two blank ID's on a bird aviary after noticing, on my walk back to the studio yesterday evening, that the red-crested turaco ID had been removed from one holder and turned round on another. So the latter was done first and then I headed back to the Seal and Penguins Coasts underground area. As I passed the first tank, which holds flounder and shanny I saw that the flounder were clearly visible... probably the first time I have seen them so well... and I didn't have the camera with me! This was the next species to do on my list... so I rushed back to the studio to grab a camera and then back to take several pics of the flounder fish and one of the shanny's was out of hiding too so I grabbed a few of him as he's next after the flounder to be painted.

The pictures were the best I have got yet, but still not brilliant and even worse than the ones I had for the seahorse!! Hey ho.... will see how I get on with them.

We had a phone call from Benn (Estates) to say that one of the new tanks (in the set up process) in the new area just built in Bug World had burst and flooded. There is a safety flood barrier set up but unfortunately the water ran out of a broken seal on the tank, down the wall behind the mural and to the floor where there was a little gap between the wall and the flood defense... and of course it went down that gap! there was some leakage into the restaurant below but I don't think it was serious. I was sent up to check the artwork of the mural to see if it had any water damage. From what I could see in the low light level of the room the mural had survived unscathed. Luckily there were no corals or other animals in the tanks that were affected... two tanks ran on one system, so both emptied. But the poor staff in Bug World have a lot of extra work to do to repair the tank and reset the system.

Just before lunch I got the drawing for the flounder done.

After lunch I wrapped up warm and headed out to sketch. I spent the first hour and half sat outside around the back of the gorilla island. The gorillas weren't about much,  I only got a few sketchy lines of them, so I used the birds that came into view as my subjects.... moorhens, a mallard, two Chiloe wigeon, a couple of jackdaws, a collared dove and a gull (sketched using my binoculars). None of them were particularly good I was very rusty. But it was good to get some practice in, however awful the results were. 

I got very cold so I headed to a warm spot... the Reptile House. By now the visitor numbers had quietened down so I could sit in my foldaway chair in front of the West African dwarf crocodile enclosure and not be in anyone's way for viewing. The male crocodile was laid out on dry land in a good position for me to sit fairly close (behind the glass) and I stayed there for the next hour drawing his portrait.

At the end of the day just after closing the house at 4.30pm, Tim the Curator of Reptiles came round to the crocodile enclosure. He has a small grill he needed to fix over a pipe that fed water from the croc pool to a turtle pool next door. His attempt failed as the female swam across the pool quickly and defended her territory from him with an aggressive presence. I don't blame him for deciding to come back and try another day... she positioned herself right by the pipe and it would have been unwise for anyone to put their hand down to attach a grill over it. That's how we knew I had been drawing the male... he continued to lay calmly, where he had no doubt been all afternoon, his head came up slightly for a few seconds but that was about it in regards to his response to Tim being in their territory. Apparently the females are the more aggressive defenders. This is her, after she followed Tim round to where I was, coming out of the pool to hold her position and point of view regarding his attempt to get in her domain. One female definitely not to mess with!

I left just after as Tim wanted to shut the house up ready to go home. So again I walked the long way back to the studio and found the red pandas wandering around after just being fed. Again... a number of photo's were taken... they looked great and the light was actually quite nice on them despite being very grey still.