My second visit of the year to my home Zoo today, and after seeing four Amur Tigers and twenty-one African Lions , I did miss my home Big Cats. I was the second one in the Zoo today after arriving exactly 10:04am- I headed down to the Big cat house home to a male Amur Tiger named Zambar and four African Lions, the pride male Wallace and his female companions Gillian, Rachel and Jasmine. Zambar was doing what he normally tends to do, pace his enclosure, a lot of visitors seem worried about this in the past but it is common. It's just because Zoo's cannot replicate the normal area for Tigers, they have kilometers of range for a male Tiger with two or three females living in or around that area, if they have cubs they tend to be the male who patrols the territory. 

Zambar is seven years old and on the 19th March he celebrates his eighth birthday. I hope he gets a mate soon, I can think of at least six females who aren't related to him, but of course that's up to the studbook holder not me. Later in the day, Zambar settled down and was a sleep for a good three hours, at feeding time at 3.00pm he began to stir getting his beef hidden in his enclosure by his keepers- He is fed every day apart from Friday which is his and the Lions starve day. Starve day is basically not feeding them for the whole day because in the wild they would not feed everyday and the Zoo don't want them to get fat.

I spent a lot of time at the Zoo today admiring the African Lions. I got some nice photos of them and they were reasonably active for a change, when I approached there enclosure two females and Wallace were outdoors, the females were on the rock formation whilst Wallace was near the indoor viewing window asleep. One female was asleep indoors on the first on-show den which you see, she later became more active and started calling to the others, which awoke an un-happy Zambar next door. I went back to the enclosure later in the day  to find Wallace and all three girls inside, the girls were all rolled over together having a sleep they were awoken by Wallace approaching the den, he then made them all move which resulted in all three girls going outdoors. 

At feeding time the Lions were given beef, one big piece of beef with four smaller pieces were on offer. Once let out a female snatched the biggest piece which was on the small waterfall, sensibly she took the piece indoors and ate it all with a few bits of regurgitation. Wallace found his piece under a tree and ate it in peace, the two other females couldn't find there pieces of meat and eventually got a little each from Wallace and the other female.