A reminder for you all that we are open to the public every day next week for February half term. We are still on our "winter" talk schedule, so finish with the owl display at 3pm, but some of our quieter winter animals are beginning to stir a bit more regularly again, so keep your eyes open.
Our badgers have settled well together after being introduced during the winter. You will usually find all five of them snuggled up in one of the smaller pods in their inside set, and although we have not started with our badger talk yet... occasionally one or two of them do venture outside later in the afternoon so keep your eyes open.
Another quieter animal for the winter is the water vole. Once again ours are beginning to stir a bit more frequently, most often seen first thing in the morning after we open. You will notice their island has had a bit of a tidy up. Every winter we take the opportunity while less groups are booked in to go around and smarten up most enclosures, beyond the usual daily and weekly cleans, and so always neaten up the water vole enclosure where it has sunk a little through the year. Give it a couple of months and it will grass up beautifully, and you won't even see the seams.
Some smartening jobs are fairly little, others are quite big, and the other thing you will notice is our new fence for the red squirrel enclosure. While the squirrels are shut in to their holding pens, we have taken the opportunity to completely re build their enclosures boundary fence. The old one was beginning to age and so it made perfect sense to put up a new one while the squirrels are temporarily not free roaming. It still needs a little finishing off, but it is looking great so far. Once finished, the squirrels will be once again let out to be able to free roam their whole walk-through enclosure. You can still see them in their holding pens this coming week though, and we feed them at the first talk of the day 10.30am.
