Tying up loose ends

Today would be a day of tying up loose ends and trying to make sure all was well on the ID sign front prior to being off for a week. Before I did anything with the ID's I printed off yesterday I remembered that I'd need another armadillo sign, so I printed one off and laminated it. Then I put it up on display and delivered the Antilles pink toed spider ID to Bug World.

Next to the Aquarium to put up the bristlenose ID panel that includes the lionhead cichlid that I finished recently. Sam, a keeper in the Aquarium, helped by holding the step ladder for me as I put the ID into the lightbox above the tank.

That took me up until 11am when I went on a walkabout around the zoo. This was for me to do a check on all the ID signs, noting which needed to be replaced, resticking any that were loose in their holders and giving any that had dirty marks a quick wipe over. That took me up to lunch.

After lunch I started printing out those ID's that needed replacing. The ongoing process of converting Quark files to Illustrator continues but today I was lucky that only a couple of the replacements needed had this to be done first. After printing them from the computer I trimmed and laminated them and then went back out to put them all up.

In the Flamingo Paddock the flamingos were actively building up their 'nests' - mud tumps onto which they will lay an egg. Looking around the other birds sharing the paddock, I couldn't see the male ruff  in his distinctive breeding plumage. Back in the studio I contacted the bird section to check if he had reverted to non breeding plumage but I learnt that the male bird had sadly died. The sign would need changing as it currently showed a male in breeding plumage and a female. As we have no plans to imeadiately replace the male I changed the signs over to the non breeding plumage sign.

The last jobs of the day were a couple of emails  and copying across adjusted or new ID files to the Zoo's server for back up on the computers.