Another little day trip, and this time to satisfy my need to see a red squirrel. Or a badger. Or some kind of native British animal. I’d settle for some owls. I think we can manage that much. So, we went to a nearby wildlife park for a visit – Shepreth Wildlife Park.

Yea. We’d been warned that it was a small park, but nice. And it was small but crammed with animals. Most of the animals there were very common like horses, goats, rabbits, etc etc. We did like the meerkats (who doesn’t like meerkats?). It was goddarn freezing the day we were at the park, so I wasn’t surprised one of the meerkats sitting under the heat lamp in their enclosure. Cute.

Meerkat keeping warm

There were also a few big animals there, like a tiger! For such a small park, I was suprised there was a tiger. It’s enclosure wasn’t huge, but it had room to run around.

Lazy Tiger on display Chuffed there's a tiger!

I was also pleased that there were a few English animals I was hoping to see, like a red fox, which was racing around.

Red Fox

It was also awesome to see the owls. I loved the owls! This is an Eagle owl. Mega eyebrows going there.

Eagle Owl

This one is a Snowy owl, like Hedwig in Harry Potter!

Snowy Owl

I may have found a wand…

It's Hedwig!

But my favourite was the Barn Owl. A beautiful owl only 20cm tall that would cock its head as it looked at you. It’s face is magnificent. I loved it.

A little owl A Barn Owl Eyeing Us Up Barn Owl

We were also really impressed by the nocturnal house, which had a full colony of fruit bats flying around inside. You actually walked into their enclosure so they were flying over your head!! It was pretty amazing.

More bats feeding Frenzy feeding by a bat

The biggest *surprise* of the trip was because of a pair of pigs.

Kune Kune Pig

These are Kune Kune pigs from New Zealand! How weird is that?

Kune Kune Pig explained

Of all the animals they had in the zoo (and there were a bunch of plain ones, such) one of the overseas varieities they had were Kune Kune pigs from home. We were fairly surprised and impressed.

There are still many English animals we’d like to see, like badgers, red squirrels and beavers. I’m sure we’ll see some at another park, or perhaps in the wild if we go to the national parks in north England.

Rob will always enjoy the simple things. He found a friend at the wildlife park. It was a duck.

[flickr video=5502948543]

Right.

3 thoughts on “Shepreth has a Little Wildlife Park”
  1. Haha! When were you there? I was there with my kids on Sunday – only because Wimpole Home Farm was closed when we got there. Hadn’t been before but I thought it was very good for a little park. My 2 year old loved the play area but wasn’t so sure about the cats (“I like lion.” “I not like tiger.”)

  2. Eeee! I love animals & drag whoever is with me to any sort of animal park or zoo if I come across one! I want to go there for the owls! OMG! I love owls! One of my good friend had a grandmother in England who she used to visit & their neighbour had a pet owl! I also think Foxes are adorable, while I know they are somewhat of a pest they just look so cute & fun!

    1. I totally love zoos and wildlife parks too. Well, I love the animals in them. There’s still internal ethical conflicts about animals in cages, but they’re always well cared for, so that’s good. The owls were surprising wonderful. A pet owl?!? That’s so awesome! Foxes are adorable, but they’re a protected species here now, so not too pest like. You can apparently see them in the wild – I’d like that very much. 🙂

Leave a Reply to Liz Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *