The sun was shining so we headed off to Colchester Zoo to see what we could see. The undeniable star of the show was Gizmo and his family and friends. Mandrills live in tropical rainforests in Africa but seem to have adapted well to the more temperate climate of Colchester. We stayed to watch the mandrills at their 3 pm feeding time and chatted with their keeper as we watched this group of monkeys. She said they had put night cameras in the pen and discovered that the young adult males would come out at night and just sit around! Gizmo is the dominant male and had just added a new member to his family. It was fascinating just watching these beautiful creatures and I would thoroughly recommend staying to have a chat with their keeper at feeding time.
I have been lucky enough to have been on safari in Africa, and something I had not expected was the mixing of so many different species in one area. In the past, zoos tended to put giraffes in separate pens from ostriches who were in separate pens from rhino, etc etc. But here in Colchester Zoo they were all together, as they would have been in the wild, and all looked extremely heathy. So, here is a random assortment of just some of the many photos I took on this beautiful sunny day in Colchester Zoo.
