'Wild Place'

This week the Graphics team have been at Wild Place putting up all the signage.

Monday 15th
I was late in due to me not setting my alarm the night before and the cat not waking me (as is her usual trick) from about 6am. Of all the mornings!

This week Phil asked me to bring the car in so that we had our own transport up to Wild Place (formerly known as Hollywood Towers Estate), so that we had freedom of when we went and how long we were there for. For the last few months both Phil and Louise have been working on the signage for the new visitor attraction, and now it was all coming back from the printers and being delivered straight to the site. All that was needed now was for us to put it all up. This includes not only animal ID and interpretation signs but all the signs for directional posts, car park, entrance, no entry's, staff only's, information panels, push and pull's for the lemur walk through, woodland pathway etc etc. Quite a stash of boards and panels some small and easily handled, others were large and needed several people to carry and put up.

We got up to Wild Place (WP) about mid morning and checked out the shed where all the signs were stored, wrapped in bubble wrap and stacked ominously high. 

Some of the signs to go up

Unfortunately it was discovered that a printing error had occurred; the printers had left off a white layer which made the graphics and photo images stand out. As the boards onto which it was all printed was a light wood, it rendered the photo images much more dull than both Louise and Phil had designed them to be. There were a few other issues and so without getting anything done we headed back to the zoo so that Phil could contact the printers and try and sort something out. WP is opening next Monday, so that leaves no time for a major reprint of all the signs. 

Once the printers had been contacted and a few things sorted we headed back to WP again (6 miles car travel from the zoo) and got there around 12.30pm. Phil set Anna and I on the directional signs and he and Louise sorted other signs.

The first 'directionals' go up

The weather was toasty hot and we had to wear Hi-viz jackets, which are not at all helpful for trying to keep cool as they trapped and held the heat! Sturdy boots or shoes had to be worn also. Hats, cool light tops and shorts were a must.. as was carrying plenty of water about with you.

Anna and I had a dilly loaded with lots of square 'directionals' which were to be screwed to a total of 7 wood posts. Each post had a different array of squares sometimes on three or four sides. We had to work out which side of the post was coded a,b,c or d and then find the correct directionals to go on in the right order. They had to be lined up pretty accurately as if the top one was out, that just got progressively more out of line the further down the post you got. Which was a little frustrating to get right at times especially when dealing with a flat surface that was bowed in the middle so the squares wobbled as the screws went in. More frustrations were with the cordless screwdriver we had which is an old cheap one that has seen better days and quickly lost its power, so didn't have the umph at times to drive the screws in past a harder section of wood, like a knot. Oh how Anna and I cussed and swore at the stupid thing! It was consequently a much slower progress than we would have liked. By 4.30 we were only on our second post! We couldn't believe how long it was taking.

We all left the site and headed back to the zoo a short while after, hot and tired from the afternoon's work.

Back in the studio before I went home I did a little more work on creating layers in some of the new Bug World ID's.


Tuesday 16th

Before we headed back up to WP this morning I had time to amend a scientific name, on a invertebrate ID sign, and print it ready to laminate tomorrow.

Back up to WP and carrying on as we did yesterday with Anna And I on the directionals. There is a lot of work going on up there and many workmen, trucks, tractors, diggers etc moving around. It looks a long way off being ready in time, but somehow these things always seem to get pulled out of a hat at the last minute. 

The 'Model Village' - the visitor centre with shop, cafe etc still with much work to be done on it

Anna and I caught up with the two guys, Mike and Martin, who were cementing in the wood posts ahead of us. So Phil gave us some ID signs to put up for the zebra, eland and pygmy goats. 

A completed post showing two of the three sides.

The photo for Blackhorse Wood is one of mine.

Again the day was spent in the scorching sun, walking back and forth over the site between the shed where the signage was stored and where the signs were going up. We were in the swing of it more now and Louise joined Anna and myself as we put up various signs around the Secret Congo section. Louise doing some precarious climbing up high fences to get a banner cable-tied in place. 

For the most part I felt unhappy that I was not able to do as much as I wished... I had a frozen shoulder last year and although I am now in the pain free recovery phase.... my wearing of a rucksack and carrying bags getting the train to and from work for a couple of month had aggravated my shoulder which is now pretty much sore all the time and obviously very troublesome to use for anything requiring height, pressure, strength etc. So Anna insisted on doing the bulk of the work and I acted as her assistant handing her signs, screws etc, which didn't make me feel very good and pretty useless!

We had a short lunch break by the sensory foot trail... Anna and Louise tried it out quickly. The glass seemed the most scary! 

Anna and Louise trying out the Sensory Foot Trail

We finished about 4.30 and headed back to the zoo.


Wednesday 17th

After laminating the invertebrate sign and taking it up to Bug World first thing this morning I was dismayed to be told that the scientific name was still wrong. I had changed one part but not another! So I had to go back to the computer change the spelling again, reprint and laminate! Got that done before Phil, Anna and myself headed up to WP. No Louise today as she doesn't work Wednesdays but she will be there Thursday and Friday to help Phil with the last of the signage.

Another long hot tiring day at WP. We seemed to have got a good proportion of the signs up. First one this morning was the main entrance sign... This was not as tricky as we had thought and we managed between the three of us to get the two panels in place for this sign... and then we covered it, so that people didn't see it and think it was already open.

The main entrance sign before it was screwed into its final position

Anna was not fairing well in the heat, she had had enough, really, by mid afternoon. But she gritted her teeth and pressed on. AT last we were able to finish off the directional posts.. Mike and Martin having cemented in the last two as we waited. All around there is a hive of frantic activity as zoo staff and contract workers hurry to get the last of the jobs done. I can't wait to see it all done and finished and accepting visitors.

The ceremonial photo of the last 'directional' being screwed into place.

The highlights for me of this week was seeing the two yearling eland males. They were in the holding paddock on Monday but out in the main grass paddock on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

Eland

They look magnificent, yet they still have a lot of growth and bulking up to do, as they mature in to the largest antelope species. The Chapman's zebra arrived Tuesday and Wednesday... they weren't yet out in the grass paddock but looked eager to be so. The pygmy goats were very cute but we didn't see the lemurs (they were shut in after arriving on Wednesday), the helmeted guinea fowl have yet to arrive, but the okapi looked great in the dappled shade of their paddock. 

Female okapi

Phil and Louise still had quite a bit to get done for the Thursday and Friday. I won't find out how it has all gone until I get back to the zoo in a week's time. I have next week booked off as holiday as I am teaching a 5 day batik workshop in Gloucester.

I'm eager to know how it all went and to go and see Wild Place up and running.    

Catch up!

Hmmm... two weeks since my last post! Tut tut! So here's a quick recap of those two weeks... 

Monday 1st July

The morning started off with me continuing with the blue spiny lizard - Sceloporus serrifer cyanogenys. But then I had to stop as some ID work needed to be done. Anna has been busy revising the size and font for the Bug World ID's, making the ID sign bigger and replacing the text font to something more clearer to read, but still with the handwritten feel about it. In the process some of the ID's that previously had a lot of text had to have the wording thinned down and one of these was the imperial scorpion. I realised that I would now need to change the text on the Twilight World version for this species, so that the text was the same on both ID's. As yet the lighting for the backlit sign has not yet been sorted so the ID sign is not yet in use, so that made it easier as I didn't have to fiddle with taking down and putting up the sign on display.
Also Mark sent me the revised species list for the rockpool display; the number of species has dropped, due almost entirely to the unstoppable eating machine called 'Satan'.... the velvet swimming crab that is dominating all others in the rockpool domain. Shorter species list meant I could thin down the ID panels for the display from three to two, and increase the spacing on the signs themselves so that it didn't look so cramped.  I was pleased with the result, especially as now all the remaining species have an ID photo to go with it so it looks complete. Once finished I printed and laminated both panels and took them up to Bug World to replace the others.


Tuesday 2nd
Today I spent all day painting the lizard. I am struggling a bit with this one too...but working on the larger size is definitely an improvement for my eyes. I finished the female in the background and started on the male.
This is some of the reference photo's I am using...

I have used two photo's for the female one for the head and one for the body. For the male it gets more complicated as our male is still not fully coloured up in maturity and the majority of ref pictures I took of him were last year when he had no colour at all as he was still immature. So I have photo's taken from the internet showing the colour of fully mature males. they have blue on their undersides that creep up round between the front and back legs. The back on each side has a rose tint and the throat is blue also. I'm having to guess a bit with the blue as photo's notoriously do not necessarily depict acurate colour, so I'm going for a mid ground on the references that I have and can tweek this once the keepers have seen the illustration and can guide me better on the tone of the blue from their experience with this species. So for the male I have used (so far) 5 photo's... 2 used for throat shape, 2 used for throat colour I used for the fore foot, 3 will be used for body colour and at least three for the tail. The main positional photo can be seen but I have slightly changed the head position and front foot.

Wednesday 3rd

Three of the new format Bug World ID's needed redoing as Mark (Assistant Curator - Invertebrates) pointed out several errors - two scientific names needed changing  and some text altered. When I had been up in Bug World yesterday I had noticed a display with Fregate beetles. This is a species we have had before and had not been shown on display for quite some time. It had an old style ID sign, so today I compiled a new sign for it in the new format. I ended up having to do it twice as on the first the scientific name was mis-spelt and I hadn't put the correct map on. This doesn't seem much for a days work but some of it was a bit involved and took time to do. One thing was that Anna had done the ID signs in Illustrator and she works without layers in that application. But I do work with layers and so I needed to set up layers on a new template and change some of the ID's she has already done. I felt bad changing it to layers (Anna has worked very hard on the signs) but as I shall be the one working with these signs the most, it makes sense to have it set up in a way I can work with.


Monday 8th

Back to painting the lizard. Did that for the whole day except to remove the black hornbill ID's from the three Forest of Birds 'book' displays as the birds have now been moved into the refurbished Round Aviary.
More blanks were printed and laminated, as several species are being moved around as the Round Aviary is done and birds are taken off show or moved, some spaces have appeared in the ID holders.

Tuesday 9th

Today I wasn't at work. I have swapped my days this week as I have a meeting with Dr Kate Evans of  Elephants For Africa  and so I shall be in on Thursday instead.

Wednesday 10th

The blanks I printed on Monday were put on the appropriate aviaries this morning and as I was doing that I saw Nigel (Curator of Birds) who let me know that they have just put in some Roulroul partridge in with the wrinkled hornbills who are also now in the Round Aviary. For the former I just printed off two copies of their ID from the computer and the latter's ID sign was not yet complete. So I finished off that, but had to double check some of the text with Nigel first. This called into question some text on the black hornbill's ID so that had to go back to Education to check.
I had two more species ID's to remove from the Forest of Birds, which meant I had to do some more reprinting as the ID's are back to back in a page format presented like a book. So for one species to be removed, the whole page has to come out, which means taking out a species that doesn't need to be taken out. I reprinted the ID's of two species that are to remain so that they can go back in the 'books' on display.

Finally at around 4.30pm I could get back to painting the lizard!

Thursday 11th

In the morning I was painting the lizard, progress is slow but steady. I am making sure I get frequent eye breaks as I don't want my eyes going fuzzy like they did last time I did a lizard that was a strain.

In the afternoon I had some laminating to do for Phil for the Splash area and Wild Place, which I then delivered to the main office. On the way back as I entered the small yard at the side of the education building I saw that Dave had two of the ferrets out for a bit of enrichment. Standing close by to keep them out of mischief and from going where they shouldn't he lets them run loose, investigating all the nooks and crannies, flower pots, stacks of equipment and the bits and bobs that have accumalated. My favourite of the ferrets was one of the ones that was out, Elf - she has the polecat markings. She's a bit of a character. Dave was barefooted and I question the sense of this with two ferrets on the loose. He laughed it off and said, 'Oh they won't bite'. I walked to the door stopping to say hi to Elf. She ran up to me (aw, how sweet was that) and stretched up my bare leg looking up at me with her sparkly eyes. 'Don't you go up my trousers.' I laughed with a little trepidation as I had crop trousers on that were cut wide. Elf promptly turned her head and sank her teeth into the skin on my shin! And then ran away all bouncy and excited. Bless her! I looked down, just a scratch, no problem  - it wasn't a vicious bite, as Dave said she was just a little too excited.

Back in the studio... as the hornbills (wrinkled and black) were now on show, having spent a day or two indoors to get used to their new surroundings, I needed to get the ID for the wrinkled up on the aviary. The black's had already been done and were already put up. I checked with education... the text for the wrinkled was fine, but the black's needed checking still. So I could now finish and print the wrinkled's ID and get that laminated and up on show along with the roulroul partridge ID.

As is usual of late, here are some photo's taken over the last two weeks at the zoo...

A new beetle sculpture was installed near the entrance to Bug World

I think this is the stegoaurus... looking great in amongst the planting.

I saw the fish being fed by a visitor one day and they were coming out of the water and onto the stony lake edge to get at the food. A mallard was literally stepping on fish to get its share too.

Our two North American river otters enjoying the sunshine and a spot of mutual grooming.

I have been told on a few occasions over the years what this extraordinary plant is called, but I keep forgetting!! It smells quite rancid.... the flies love it!

Male Palawan peacock pheasant

The gorgeous plumage of the back of a male Palawan peacock pheasant.

The twin ring-tailed lemur babies cling to Mum

Yellow mongoose waiting near the door of their enclosure, very alert. It must be near feeding time!