BWC Photo Comp 2013: Runners Up

Okay, so here they are... It is time to announce the winners and runners up of last years BWC Photographic Competition. In previous years we have spread the announcements out over a few posts, one for each category, but this year we will just do the two. Today we will show you the runners up and then on Monday we will announce the category winners... leaving the overall winner to be announced at the end of next week.

Many thanks once again to Danny Green for selecting his favourites out of the categories, and great thanks to all who entered and helped support the competition over the past year.

So, on to the runners up...

Animal Portrait Runner Up

"There you are!" by rob'81 - flickr

Animal in their Habitat Runner Up

 "Red fox, Frodo, hides behind trees" by crowlem - flickr

Animal in Motion Runner Up

 "42/52 Run!" by wacka quacker - flickr

Animal and their Keeper Runner Up

 "Leonie and Flo" by dap's images - flickr

Fauna Fun Runner Up

 "Thith thalmon ith thalty" by gus h - flickr

Junior Runner Up

 "Red fox" by km-photography98 - flickr

Congratulations to the runners up, who will all be displayed in our gallery in the coffee shop over the coming year.

The category winners will be announced on Monday, with the overall winner being shown at the end of next week. Keep an eye on the blog around mid February for news on our photo gallery going forward!

Wildcats on Hiatus

It won't be long until our wildcats start to think about breeding. Last year we had good success with both of our pairs producing healthy litters. One of our kittens has been donated to Wildwood Trust in Herne Bay to help keep their kitten of last year company, but this still leaves us with 9 wildcats at the Centre.

They have been difficult to re-home this year, and so the decision has been made to take a year out from breeding them and see how things stand next year. With all of our owls currently taking up our off display pens while their new aviaries are being built, this means we have had to tackle our cat problem from a different perspective. Having talked to our vet at great length, and not wanting to neuter any cat which may have potential for future breeding, we have decided to put the females on a contraceptive pill. Once our off display pens are free once again, we will be able to separate the cats until a time in which we can move them on to other collections.

Despite the disappointment of lack of kittens this year, wildcat conservation looks like it really could be moving in the right direction in 2014 with the plans I have heard about. I will mention more about these over the coming months.

New Red Squirrel

Apologies to you all for the lack of posts this past week, but we have been extremely busy! The continuation of heavy rain has caused a few problems... nothing that has affected the animals, and nothing we haven't been able to cope with, but all things that take time to sort out or frustratingly make normal routines longer to do!

So what is new? Well this past week I did manage to find time to collect a new male red squirrel from Wildwood Trust in Herne Bay. He will be added to our breeding program in the spring, and hopefully sire some kittens which may be used for some exciting release projects we have lined up... more about these over the course of the year.