kaberett | BATS

Between one thing and another we wound up having a semi-impromptu mini-break in Chester, including a few hours at Chester Zoo.

... where we went into the bats enclosure and were transfixed for about an hour, basically from the moment we walked in until chucking-out time.

It's a big dark room, artificially crepuscular, with lots of trees (dead) for roosts, and somewhere in the vicinity of 350 bats (Seba's short-tailed and Rodrigues fruit bats). THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. They were flying well within a foot of our faces. You could FEEL THE WIND FROM THEIR WINGBEATS.

And A was greatly honoured by one LANDING ON THEIR TROUSERS.

There were many other Excellent Creatures -- the Humboldt penguins in particular were very excited by the rain (so much porpoising), and the giant otters were indeed giant, and there was an enormous dragonfly, and the flamingos went from almost entirely asleep (including one baby that had not yet got the hang of the whole one-leg trick) to YELLING INCESSANTLY after being buzzed by the scarlet ibis.

Extremely good afternoon out, 13/10, would recommend.

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From:

shanaqui

I looooved the bat room in Chester Zoo. Someone was getting to feed them, when I was there, as a zookeeper experience type thing, and it looked so awesome.

kaberett

Yes! We got to see that too! Which has made us EVEN MORE EXCITED about the bit where A's birthday present this year (which we've utterly failed to actually book) is one of those experiences :-)

hilarita

But did the giant otters squak? Also is Chester Zoo easily accessible by public transport?

(See: https://tartarus.org/gareth/stuff/giant_otter_squak.mp4 - warning: it gets very loud)