It really was the most beautiful day, the sun shining and the sky the most amazing almost Mediterranean blue, so R. and I set off for the Zoo. Edinburgh Zoo is up a very steep hillside so we intended to take the Hilltop Safari Bus to the very top of the hill and then walk down. Unfortunately, the Hilltop Safari Bus had limited availability, which seemed an odd thing to do during half term week, when the zoo was guaranteed to be bursting with people with small children, pushchairs etc. Even odder, most of the eating places were closed. Fortunately, we had taken a picnic so all we needed was somewhere to sit down out of the wind. A woman in the safari bus queue told us that closed cafés were normal for holiday time, and we should be glad there was any café open at all. She said she had once brought her child there for a birthday treat, and they had to leave the zoo to get something to eat! This seemed very odd, and we began to get the impression of a place that had not really planned for so many visitors. There were too many people in the queue for the Hillside Safari Bus so we couldn't get on, and the driver was very grumpy. No doubt he was fed up with the disgruntled queues of people who couldn't fit into the bus! We walked up to the Monkey Walkthrough, where we were asked to use hand-wash gel to clean our hands - only there wasn't any as the container was empty! Later, we found the dirty Ladies loo with no toilet paper, so overall we got the impression of a place that was not well organised for receiving visitors in the numbers to be expected at half term. The zoo staff themselves, apart from the very grumpy bus driver, were uniformly friendly, charming and informative - though we did think that people placed in the enclosures to talk about the animals we were seeing might have said something to the large numbers of people who were disregarding the notices forbidding flash photography and frightening the animals. The glass through which you viewed the animals showed a great many reflections though, so often I took photos of myself, rather than the animal, so perhaps that explained why so many people were using flash.
All these complaints aside, we enjoyed the zoo very much, because we really enjoyed the animals. The Monkey Walkthrough began as a disappointment because the monkeys had not yet ventured out into the sun, and we had to see them indoors and behind glass, but they were very close.
They are White-faced Saki Monkeys, and really quite appealing; you can see we had disturbed them at lunch, but they didn't seem to care. Only the male has a white face, apparently. This was one of the photos that had reflections - of my face - but I think I have managed to cut most of it out with Photoshop.
After a brief pause to admire the rhea and some deer-like animal whose name we could not find (not all of the enclosures are as well labelled as they might be) we went to look at the chimpanzees. These were also indoors rather than in their enclosures, but we were able to see them eating and relaxing. Unfortunately, it was so bright outside that my photos are rubbish, so I won't post any here, but we stayed for quite a while watching them. Most were lying in their nests or along branches, or lazily toying with a few ropes; they looked as though they had just woken up, or perhaps they were just relaxing after an early lunch.
We spent some time in a walk-through aviary where there were some very brightly coloured birds, though mostly they stayed too deep in the foliage or flew past us too fast to photograph. There was a very helpful woman there who gave us information - the white bird that flashed past and made so much noise was a Balinese Starling apparently, though I think I saw one in a big walk-through aviary in Hong Kong where it was called a Balinese Mynah Bird. It flew too fast for a photo this time, so I can't be certain it was the same bird, but my Hong Kong picture of what looks like it is at http://paulandnorasworldtour.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/last-of-hong-kong.html
The woman in the aviary scattered some meal worms for a large Jungle Turkey which had the most incredibly beautiful iridescent feathers, and we were able to admire the feathers as the turkey picked around our feet. She was close enough for me to worry about the safety of my shoe laces! Again, she was hard to photograph because she moved her head so quickly to pick up the mealworms, so her head is out of focus in all my pictures. My phone camera clearly doesn't have a sufficiently fast lens.
Another exhibit called 'Living Links' has Capuchin and Squirrel Monkeys, and they were mostly outside where they were scampering around and arguing over tasty bits of their lunch. The smaller baby squirrel monkeys were inside, and they were absolutely charming.
They leapt and played and tussled right on the window-sill in front of us, though again my photos are just streaks, they are so fast.
All this looking a monkeys having lunch had made us hungry, so we stopped to have our picnic. Then we went to see the Pygmy Mongooses (Mongeece? Mongice?) They are very appealing, and we spent a while looking at them, especially the four tiny babies which seemed to have got on top of their nest box and were wondering whether or not to jump down; it was a considerable drop for them, more than a foot, and they were only the size of mice. Then, all of a sudden there were only three of them on top of the box, and a bigger mongoose below the box seemed to be eating what looked like one of them. We departed hastily, feeling quite heart-broken.
The penguins were charming, as usual. They are having a new enclosure built, (which looks very smart indeed) so they are housed in a couple of temporary enclosures, and there is, sadly, no Penguin Walk at present. We were disappointed about this, and so, we thought, were the penguins. Some of them were pacing up and down as if waiting to be taken out to walk, so I imagine they look forward to it as well.
Next stop was the koalas. Apparently Edinburgh Zoo is the only zoo in the UK to have koalas, and they are certainly appealing. The smaller one had only just arrived and was clearly trying to get over her jet-lag, as she kept her eyes pressed tightly shut all the time; or perhaps she just hated all the camera flashes.
R. felt a bit cheated as the koalas we had seen on our visit to Australia in 1999 had all been asleep too; but fortunately the bigger male koala was awake and looked at us sleepily for a while before crawling up and branch and going back to sleep.
There are two huge rhinos in this zoo, and I have never been so close to a rhino in my life as I was to this one. It was convinced that the bushes bordering its enclosure must be especially delicious, so it was having them for lunch. It was so close I could have stroked it! In fact, it was so big I couldn't get all of it in the photo.
I knew rhinos were big, but this one seemed particularly huge, though as you can see, the horn isn't very big. We looked in on the tapirs next door, which were also bigger than I remember, but my photos weren't much use, and we went on to the big cats.
I did see quite a few of these, though often only briefly, as they move extremely fast. The Golden cat made only a brief appearance at the top of its enclosure, but I was very excited to see the Wolverine, which I have never seen before. Unfortunately, it hid behind a rock before I could get the camera out. The jaguars leapt about too fast to photograph, but they are very beautiful; the male appears to have a black coat, though when it catches the light, you can see the spots under it, so that he looks slightly mottled. The female just looks like a heavier version of a leopard. The tiger is enormous, but was lying quietly in a tree house at the far end of his enclosure, rather too far away to photograph. I managed several photos of the Amur Leopard as he was pacing about just in front of me, but he also was moving rather fast so my photos are mostly out of focus. Fortunately, he sat down at one point, so I managed a better one.
I spent quite a while with the otters who were also delightful, playing and wriggling and squeaking and whistling right beside me.
One of them heard the camera click and squeaked back at it. They were waiting to be fed, and when the food arrived, they had to fight the gull for it - seagulls like fish too!
We also spent some time with the Meerkats, as they are very entertaining; they played and ran and jumped and quarrelled and dug holes and stood on their hind legs, as usual. Then suddenly nearly all of them stood upright in a row; this was because the keeper was approaching, with their lunch. They obviously knew, to the minute, when to expect him!
The highlight of our zoo visit was obviously the pandas, and R. was very excited as she has never seen a live panda. She fully expected to be disappointed, but we were extremely lucky to see both of them awake and moving about. We had a timed ticket, and even then had to join a huge queue and be let in and taken round by a very enthusiastic and informative member of the zoo staff. We went indoors first, to where the pandas have their bedrooms. Tian Tian the female was sweetly asleep in her bedroom when we went in, with her paws curled over her nose, but Yang Guang the male had just woken up and was wandering about sleepily wondering what to do next. After looking out of his door, he decided to go outside into his enclosure and enjoy the sun, so we turned our attention to Tian Tian. As soon as he had gone out, she woke up and yawned, then decided to get down and go outside into her enclosure.
At that point, we all went outside too. Tian Tian wandered about in her enclosure, then went over to the gate between the two enclosures and looked through, to see what Yang Guang was doing. At this point, as soon as he noticed her, he went back inside! We had walked round to his enclosure by this time, and you can't go backwards because another group is following on, so that was our panda viewing over, though we were still able to ask questions about pandas. Still, we were very lucky to see so much of them, and very much closer than the ones I saw in Hong Kong.
We had hoped to see the Asiatic Lion, but R. was too exhausted to walk back uphill at that point, so we decided to have another go at the Safari Bus and set off down the hill. Unfortunately, it is not well signposted, and we wasted some time trying to find the way, so we missed the last bus up the hill by 2 minutes! Still we had a look at the Painted Hunting Dogs on the way down. They were in their den relaxing after lunch, so we had a good close up view of them; my photos are no good though, because of the reflections in the glass. We also had a good view of their lunch, which appeared to have been the carcass of something about the size of a sheep; it was currently being enjoyed by some ravens as we hurried past it.
So we left and caught the bus home, having enjoyed our day very much, in spite of a few problems. The animals are wonderful, we saw lots of interesting things and the zoo clearly does a lot of valuable research work, which was generally well-explained on the way round. We had the feeling that the zoo would benefit from some better visitor management though!< r />
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