The Cotswold Wildlife Park | August 2018

Back in mid-August, my older sister, Marie, came to stay from Germany for the week, and while she was here, we decided to fit in yet another trip to The Cotswold Wildlife Park.

It was my second visit to the wildlife park in six weeks. That has to be a new record, even for me! What can I say? I love animals, and never turn down an opportunity to spend the day around them.

I've said it before, but I genuinely never get tired of visiting The Cotswold Wildlife Park, There are so many amazing animals to see, it's a beautiful place to walk around, and a good place to destress and have a natter. 

I won't go in to all the facts and history of the park again today because I've talked about it all before (if you want to know more about the place, check out my previous three posts here, here, and here), but I wanted to share some of the photos I took and talk a little about my recent visit.

We arrived around half eleven on a warm, sunny Friday, and spent about four hours leisurely wandering around the grounds, watching the animals, checking out some of their unusual plants and flowers, and of course, stopping for ice cream. Let's be honest here: it's gotta be done!

Our visit was a complete contrast to my last visit with my Mum back in July. As it was the summer holidays, this time the place was packed with people, so there were crowds around most enclosures, and we had to queue to get in to several exhibits, like the walk-through Madagascar exhibit (which has free-roaming lemurs and birds), tropical house, and reptile house. The crowds were what you'd expect from a zoo during school holidays or on weekends, but it's definitely more enjoyable to visit when it's a little quieter and you can view the animals at your own pace. I'd recommend visiting on a weekday in term time if you prefer your zoo visits a little quieter. It was nice to see the place so busy, though, and luckily, it was only really the enclosed areas which were too crowded for my taste.

The crowds didn't stop us from enjoying our visit, though; far from it. We had such a fun day out!

Our day out began at the Walled Gardens, where every visit to The Cotswold Wildlife Park should begin. Here we watched sifakas jumping around their enclosure, ventured in to Madagascar to see the lemurs, listened to a kookaburra sing, observed squirrel monkeys at feeding time, explored a tropical rainforest, rediscovered the amazing giant hornbills, enjoyed watching the penguins swim, marvelled at a climbing kiwi tree tunnelling over a path by the macaws (something we'd never seen before), and looked at countless other fascinating animals and plants.

After a pit stop for ice cream just outside the gardens, we headed on to the aviaries where we saw all kinds of owls, vultures, caracaras, cranes, storks, ibises, tawny frog mouths, wolverines, and more- most of which were napping in the sunshine.

There are also emus and monkeys in that section, but we forgot to head over to see them, and at the bottom is the pallas cat, a small wild cat with a broad face and a grey coat that looks like he belongs in an eighties fantasy movie. He usually retreats to the back of his enclosure when people approach, but this time he came over to see us and stood up on his hind legs, with his little tail wagging. I wanted to smuggle him home!

From there, we moved on to the courtyard in the centre of the park where the reptile, bat, and insect houses can be found, along with the armadillos, binturong, simang gibbons, mouse lemurs, tortoises, and prevost's squirrels. It was so busy in this section that we didn't even try to go in most of the indoor houses. In fact, it was so busy in the hot and humid main reptile house, that Marie gave up and walked straight back out, and I didn't even bother trying to view the second building after spending an age shuffling single-file through the first. You couldn't even pause in front of the enclosures to look at the animals properly; just glance as you shuffled forward in a line. I did manage to steal a glimpse at all kinds of snakes, lizards, frogs, and crocodiles while I snaked my way through, but it wasn't fun.



When I finally made it out of the exit, I went to see the armadillos who were excitedly scurrying around their enclosure like energetic puppies. They're one of my favourite animals to see at the wildlife park, and in my opinion, one of the cutest animals ever! I could've watched them all day.

Wanting to get away from the crowds, we moved on, paused to see the sleeping binturong, and headed across the great lawn, which is dotted with magnificent giant trees, to do a quick lap of the children's farmyard. In the farmyard you can expect to see zebu, pigs, goats, donkeys, cattle, sheep, miniature ponies, ducks, chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, and rats. Basically the sort of animals you'd expect to find in a children's farmyard. You can even take your kids in to the pygmy goat pen to pet them if you like, which is something we always enjoyed when we were kids. Without kids of our own, we're a little old for that now, but you don't have to be a child to enjoy wandering around the farmyard and petting a donkey or pony or two. It's enjoyable for adult animal lovers, too.

We followed the path around from the farmyard to what has always been one of my favourite sections of the park- an enclosed woodland-like area that is home to a variety of shy and retiring animals. I'll admit I was disappointed not to see the giant anteaters again, but enjoyed seeing the tapirs, maras, and capybaras, who were all resting in their paddocks. I was also fascinated by the black and white storks who had built an absolutely enormous nest on the ground in their enclosure. As we walked on, we also saw wallabies resting under the trees, a flock of flamingos, cranes, guinea fowl, wolves, a scraggly peacock displaying his feathers, pelicans having a nap on the path by the lake, and all kinds of water fowl swimming on the water. It was blissful.

We were both worn out by the time we made it past the lake, so went and took a long leisurely rest on a bench overlooking the rhino paddock and the manor house just behind it- something we like to do on every visit because the view is so pretty. Sadly, most of the rhinos were indoors this time, except for Mr. rhino who was waiting patiently in the yard for his harem of ladies and children to come out and play, but he provided us with more than enough entertainment, along with all the swallows or swifts that were pirouetting in the air above his paddock.

When we'd regained our strength, we pressed on to finish the remaining section of the park where most of the other large animals can be found. As well as white rhinos, there are zebras, giraffes, lions, clouded leopards, and bactrian camels to be seen, plus some smaller animals like porcupines and mongoose.

The large animals are naturally some of the most popular animals with visitors, so this was another area that was extremely busy, and difficult to view. To be honest, I was so exhausted and struggling with the pain by this point that I didn't really care; I was ready to get back to the car and rest, so we only took a quick glance at the animals as we wandered past to get through them all quickly.

Before we headed off, though, we also explored a brand new exhibit called 'Little Africa' which had opened near the camel enclosure since my last visit in July. It has a small indoor section (which used to be the zebra stables) with small animals like naked-mole-rats, gundis, bush babies, and tropical fish, and then leads out in to a small covered aviary which is home to animals like cranes and dik-diks. We didn't spot the bush babies or the dik-diks, but the gundis were super cute, and the naked-mole-rats (which had been relocated from the Walled Gardens) were as fascinating as always. They are the strangest little critters; they're rodents but they operate almost like a colony of ants or bees!  The only female to breed in the colony is the queen, usually with one to three male partners, while the rest of the colony are sterile, and serve as workers. I've also just learnt that they lack sensitivity to pain in their skin, and are remarkably resistant to cancer. They're so fascinating but so bizarre.

It was only a tiny exhibit, but it was great to find a new section we hadn't done a million times before, and see some new animals. It's been a few years since they last added a new section, and I've always felt that they've needed more animals at the far end of the park which has the fewest animals but involves the most walking, so this was a welcome find.

And so, with our visit complete, we headed off to find the car after four enjoyable hours at the wildlife park, happy, satisfied, but thoroughly worn out. We had a wonderful time wandering around looking at all kinds of weird and wonderful animals in the sunshine, discovering plenty of exotic plants we'd never seen before, and just catching up as we walked around and stopped for rests. We may have visited The Cotswold Wildlife Park dozens of times before, but we enjoyed this visit as much as the first, and know well be back soon. Wild leopards wouldn't keep me away.

When was the last time you went to the zoo? What animals do you most enjoy going to see?

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