Tuesday 4 September 2012

End of the holidays ... welcoming Autumn

Whoosh, another school holiday is over and Imogen is back to school today. Year 2! How? When? What happened there? She is super excited to be in the oldest year of the school.

So after all the other exciting times and adventures over the holidays, we ended them with a trip to Kent where Alex was taking part in a course for work to do with thermal imaging in the mammal world. I thought it a great opportunity to go along and spend the day at the Wildlife Park where the course was being held.

So we went among to Wildwood and had a lovely day, Imogen and I explored the whole place together, talked to the keepers and listened to a few animal talks. Very excited to see the Wolves and the Beavers, and many other wonderful mammals. Oh how I would love to see Wolves re-introduced in the wild in the UK, such a beautiful animal, so misunderstood by our ancestors ... maybe one day.

Here are a few of the animals we met ...

 
 Tortoise, look at those claws!
 Meeting Bison in the Forest

 Red Squirrels - such a rare sight in many areas unfortunately
(and difficult to capture on a camera!)
Playful Polecats

The stars for me, and I think for Imogen too, were the Wolves and the Beavers. The beavers were all asleep on the first walk around but we popped back to check and were treated to them swimming and then eating.

 One of the Wild pack
 Hand reared Wolf - Mishka aged 12

Mishka and her sister Nadja were saved by the keepers after the wolf enclosure flooded and their mother was stressed unable to find the cubs, unfortunately they then had to be hand reared as they had been in contact with humans, but their lives were saved.

 Wonderful swimmers - beavers





3 comments:

  1. Looks like a wonderfully interesting place. Something reassuring about Autumn and the continuity and change feeling it brings. xx

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  2. Interesting place. I know my eldest would have loved seeing the wolves. I'll add that to my list of places to go.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I (we) now want to go to the Wolf place in Reading! More to see and you can get really close to them too.

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