April Update

 

Earlier this month we welcomed people back to the Centre for the first time in over 4 months!.. With restrictions easing on the 12th, we were allowed to open to the public once again at weekends and school holidays, and run our pre booked photographic days and school trips. 

I must confess to being a little apprehensive in waiting to see people here again, I guess having got used to having the place to ourselves and a new routine, but within the first few minutes of opening the doors on the morning of the 12th everything just seemed to be right again!.. Staff and animals relaxed, public seemed happy to be able to get out, and what a joy it was to have the Centre feel alive again and have a real "buzz" about the place... something I have definitely missed!

As well as the public, we had some other new arrivals this past month. Once again our wildcats have bred, and hopefully kittens will start to show themselves in a few weeks time

Our badger cubs are doing great, and guess what?.. our other female had a litter of cubs too... so two litters of badger cubs. It's such a shame we have to have our sett closed off still due to covid restrictions, but once we are allowed we will open it up for you to meet them. 

We have the usual water voles and harvest mice litters, which will allow us to do some more releases with them later this year, and our dormice we checked on last month have now been relocated to London Zoo where they are in quarantine before this years release. Things really seem to be getting back on track this year!

Really exciting news is that our adder were seen "dancing" this week. We had a photographic day here on Tuesday, and they were lucky enough to see the first bit of dancing this Spring. Fingers crossed for a nice weekend and hopefully a bit more action will be seen. 

Our photo days have always been popular, but this season interest has been extremely high. I guess everyone is just looking to get out and about having been cooped up for so long! Our owl days in particular had been fully booked for a long time. Due to a school cancellation we were able to add an extra day, which nearly booked out overnight! A great time of year to to photograph them though, the bluebells are out in our woodland and the owls  always look great in them!