Last weekend started with our second visit to the Kyiv Expats new social group – the First Friday Club. The idea is that the first Friday of every month the group meets at a different bar in Kyiv for some drinking and general chat. This time was at a bar called Route 66, an American-biker themed bar not too far from where we live. We had a nice evening, met lots of people and listened to some good live music.
Steve’s lynx enclosure is now fully finished and the gorgeous Carpathian Lynx has been enjoying very much. The last work Steve had to do in the enclosure was train the staff to find any faults in the fence and be able to fix them. So, he spent an interesting afternoon trying to break the fence so it could be repaired – this was actually quite difficult because the fence has been extremely well constructed and was consequently extremely hard to create faults in!
The temperature has dropped a lot over this week, its currently getting close to -10°C (during the day, even colder at night) which is pretty crazy. I’m so cold and having to wear nearly all my clothes at the same time I don’t remember ever being somewhere this cold before – I’m sure it never gets to these temperatures during the day in the UK. It’s so cold outside that your nose just starts running and it makes your eyes hurt – even with thick gloves your fingers start to ache. I think everyone here except for Steve and I have gone for the “wear as much fur as possible” option, which may actually be quite sensible under the circumstances. No one is wearing bright sparkly clothes anymore, like in the summer. Everyone is in dark clothes and excessive fur trimmings, but the girls are all still in very very high heel shoes!
The snow started to fall properly on Monday morning, there hasn’t been too much yet – just a fairly thin covering over everything. It’s been so cold that it hasn’t melted during the week so every day the layer gets a bit thicker over the frozen puddles – so slippery!
We’ve had the elephant outside for his exercises every day this week even during the snow. He’s been a bit curious about it all – investigating the snow with his trunk but it doesn’t seem to have bothered him at all. The exercising is going well and although it’s still early days I think I can see some muscles starting to build up properly on his legs.
As we have been doing a lot of work in and around the elephant house I’ve been able to closely watch Boy and was interested in how tall he was. I found a mark on the wall that corresponded to his shoulder height (you measure elephants like horses – height at the withers) and measured him. I read in a book whilst I was at elephant school that Boy was 3.25 metres ten years ago, and since then he has grown to 3.45 metres. Possibly he is now the tallest bull elephant in Europe?
We had some very big meetings this week with zoo staff and representatives from the Kyiv Institute of Zoology and various environmental NGOs. These were very long and important meetings as we are starting to work on creating legislation for Ukraine to deal with zoos, wild animals and their conservation. There are some laws already but they are very basic and mostly deal with domestic animals and livestock and therefore aren’t quite relevant to zoos and conservation. I’ve never written any governmental legislation before and it’s pretty difficult when working in a different language with a different culture towards these things.
The zoo has just completed the first part of a new visitor education programme – a stork and native wildlife education centre. This is in a part of the zoo where we have some beautiful lakes and naturally forested area. So far invertebrate, bird and bat boxes have been installed along with a display of artificial stork nests from all regions of Ukraine – these are a familiar sight in villages across the country. When completed, this area will have a nature trail, a stork museum and conservation centre and lots of activities for children. We’re really pleased with this work and think the visitors will like it a lot.
Steve’s lynx enclosure is now fully finished and the gorgeous Carpathian Lynx has been enjoying very much. The last work Steve had to do in the enclosure was train the staff to find any faults in the fence and be able to fix them. So, he spent an interesting afternoon trying to break the fence so it could be repaired – this was actually quite difficult because the fence has been extremely well constructed and was consequently extremely hard to create faults in!
The temperature has dropped a lot over this week, its currently getting close to -10°C (during the day, even colder at night) which is pretty crazy. I’m so cold and having to wear nearly all my clothes at the same time I don’t remember ever being somewhere this cold before – I’m sure it never gets to these temperatures during the day in the UK. It’s so cold outside that your nose just starts running and it makes your eyes hurt – even with thick gloves your fingers start to ache. I think everyone here except for Steve and I have gone for the “wear as much fur as possible” option, which may actually be quite sensible under the circumstances. No one is wearing bright sparkly clothes anymore, like in the summer. Everyone is in dark clothes and excessive fur trimmings, but the girls are all still in very very high heel shoes!
The snow started to fall properly on Monday morning, there hasn’t been too much yet – just a fairly thin covering over everything. It’s been so cold that it hasn’t melted during the week so every day the layer gets a bit thicker over the frozen puddles – so slippery!
We’ve had the elephant outside for his exercises every day this week even during the snow. He’s been a bit curious about it all – investigating the snow with his trunk but it doesn’t seem to have bothered him at all. The exercising is going well and although it’s still early days I think I can see some muscles starting to build up properly on his legs.
As we have been doing a lot of work in and around the elephant house I’ve been able to closely watch Boy and was interested in how tall he was. I found a mark on the wall that corresponded to his shoulder height (you measure elephants like horses – height at the withers) and measured him. I read in a book whilst I was at elephant school that Boy was 3.25 metres ten years ago, and since then he has grown to 3.45 metres. Possibly he is now the tallest bull elephant in Europe?
We had some very big meetings this week with zoo staff and representatives from the Kyiv Institute of Zoology and various environmental NGOs. These were very long and important meetings as we are starting to work on creating legislation for Ukraine to deal with zoos, wild animals and their conservation. There are some laws already but they are very basic and mostly deal with domestic animals and livestock and therefore aren’t quite relevant to zoos and conservation. I’ve never written any governmental legislation before and it’s pretty difficult when working in a different language with a different culture towards these things.
The zoo has just completed the first part of a new visitor education programme – a stork and native wildlife education centre. This is in a part of the zoo where we have some beautiful lakes and naturally forested area. So far invertebrate, bird and bat boxes have been installed along with a display of artificial stork nests from all regions of Ukraine – these are a familiar sight in villages across the country. When completed, this area will have a nature trail, a stork museum and conservation centre and lots of activities for children. We’re really pleased with this work and think the visitors will like it a lot.
Boy in his first snow
From the office window
Hippo in the warm
Elephant exercise in the snow
Siberian Tiger feeling at home
Rhino bench
The zoo's other "elephants" in the children's playground
Completed Lynx Enclosure
Bird valley enclosure
Carpathian Lynx in her completed enclosure
Having a good scratch
Frozen Wildlife Area
Stork Nest Display
Invertebrate, Bird and Bat box display
Bee Nest Box
