New Arrivals

We have had a few new arrivals over the past couple of weeks, and I have been um-ing and ah-ing over which ones to announce to you first, but then thought "sod it", I will mention both... then give both of them there own blog post when they are moved on display!

So firstly, last weekend we welcomed three highland cows to the Centre. From left to right in the photo above, Duncan, Malcom and Donalbain.

Why do we have highland cows?.. To manage the nature reserve of course. Think conservation grazing. More about this when we move them out to the reserve, but for now you may get a sneaky glimpse of them from the bridge leading over to the wetland boardwalk. They currently spend the day in the small area of the deer paddock behind our second fox enclosure.

A couple of weeks a go now a new pine marten arrived to the Centre, having been bred earlier this year at the New Forest Wildlife Park. He is in the photo above. We have been very successful in the past in paring up our pine martens, but have still yet to breed them here... the last mammal for us to successfully breed! This as led us to think that possibly our pairs are not compatible, and so new arrivals to spice things up may be the answer.

So we also welcomed this beauty above, a female pine marten which we collected from Wildwood Trust a couple of days a go. Isn't she gorgeous! They are both this years kits so will not be old enough to breed next year, but hopefully in the future we can pair these two up with our others and get things moving here.

Currently neither of these pine martens are on display, but hopefully will be by the new year. Of course I will let you know when they are. One of them will be moving to the pen next to the badger sett and opposite the wildcats, which was originally built for pine martens 5 years ago but ironically has never housed one!