This past 2 weeks have been busy with lots of moves in the nursery, I could barely keep up! I hope this update makes sense!
The 3 infant macaques have been weaned and grown enough to move up into a bigger enclosure. This has scared them a little but they will get used to it soon enough and start to climb like me!
Unfortunately, the smallest of the 6 silvered langurs was too weak to recover from the inadequate care given before it’s arrival with us and sadly passed away. The 3 remaining young ones have moved into a larger enclosure next to the 2 older ones, hopefully they will make friends and be able to live in a group together.
Another unfortunate story is a rescue of our very own, one of our breeding pairs of gibbons gave birth. However, the mother wasn’t taking care of it so after making a hard decision the keepers decided to bring it to the nursery for hand rearing. It is very strange looking as they are very pink when they are so young, but it still has a good pair of lungs to call when it’s hungry! I have seen a fair few gibbon come through the nursery, so I have hope that this one will do well under the keepers’ care.
A rescue that didn’t stay very long at all was a young-adult red-billed blue magpie. He was rescued from a trader and after a few days being curious at our nursery he was deemed fit enough for release into the surrounding forest. The Indian rollers that I mentioned in my first update were also released, they had lost all of their baby feathers and looked wonderful! They have stuck around the nursery area for the time being, it is nice to see their beautiful blue colors flying overhead.
We had 2 worrying new arrivals in the form of very injured small Indian civets. The vets were treating them straight away upon arrival, one of them had a broken leg and the other a broken back. It is thought that they fell from a trader’s vehicle as they were found in a bag on the side of the road by a Cambodian who called us and handed them to our Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team in Phnom Penh. Despite the vet treatment the one with a broken leg passed away, hopefully the other one can pull through.
The leopard cat is becoming very fierce even though it is still quite small! It has moved on to eating solid food and loves chicken.
We have had various birds arrive, there are so many species of birds in Cambodia it is hard to know all of them, especially when they are young! One of them is definitely an oriental pied hornbill, but I am not sure about the other. It is about 20cm tall with long long legs and really big feet, perhaps a water bird, it’ll probably be released soon enough.
The small-clawed and smooth-coated otter are still getting along fine and are just as noisy as ever! Check out this video of them chowing down on some fish!
Over with our elephant keepers we now have 4 very special douc langur babies. It is worrying that we have seen so many in the recent months all arriving from the north east of the country. This most recent one has an eye problem that is being seen by the vet. At least in the end they may all be able to live in a group together, there is 1 male and 3 females, this also means that they have more chance to be released!
There is not much change in my enclosure, I have 5 macaque friends, 3 long tailed macaques and 2 pig-tailed macaques. Here’s some of them enjoying some enrichment on Thursday, given to us by the tour guests. The alpha is nearly big enough to move on soon, he dominates a lot of the enrichment we get given! Did you see the video of him enjoying some recently?
