To celebrate the spooky season, Jubilee Gardens have kindly donated pumpkins to us once again, grown and nurtured by their team. Staff across the Park have been busy decorating and carving the pumpkins, which are now proudly on display in the Pumpkin Patch by the Children’s Farmyard.
For six years running we have worked with Jubilee Gardens – a local charity where adults who experience varying levels of learning disability grow all sorts of wonderful produce.
We’ve invited the students and volunteers from the Jubilee Gardens Project over to the Park once again to see the pumpkins they grew and nurtured from seed transformed into this year’s spooktacular display. To find out more about the Jubilee Gardens Project, please visit: jubileegardens.co.uk.
We also celebrated Frankenstein, our male Capybara, who turned 5 on Halloween this year. Known as Frank for short, he very much enjoyed his birthday and was treated to a delicious surprise from his keepers to celebrate. Frank tucked in straight away and kindly let his partner Swede have a taste as well.
DID YOU KNOW?
Capybaras have built in suncream – Their skin secretes an oily, moisturising substance to naturally help protect them from the tropical sun while they venture between water and land.
You can find Frank and Swede in the Walkthrough next to the Tapirs.
As we are heading into the shorter days and longer nights, we would like to shine the spotlight on some of our nocturnal species: Our fruit bats and Ghost our Bushbaby.In the Bat House you can see two species of bats, the larger Straw-Coloured bats and the small Sebas bats. Both species consume fruit as their main source of nutrition and visitors can often see the bats nibbling away on their fruit kebabs that hang from the ropes around the enclosure and in front of the viewing window.
DID YOU KNOW?
As pollinators and seed dispersers, Straw-Coloured fruit bats play an important role in forest health and reforestation.
Photo credit: Sophie Angood
Ghost is aptly named as he is one of our most elusive animals in the Park. Visitors are lucky if they catch a glimpse of him during the day as usually he will be tucked away somewhere resting.
DID YOU KNOW?
Their eyes are so big they cannot move inside their sockets; Bushbabies must turn their entire head (up to 180 degrees) to look around.
You can find Ghost in our Little Africa exhibit opposite the Camels.
EXTRA EXTRA!
Please could we remind you that the clocks went back on Sunday 25 October. The Park is now open daily from 10:00am to 4:00 pm or DUSK (whichever is earlier), with last admission at 3:00 pm.
Please could we remind visitors to always check our website or social media for updates ahead of visiting the Park.