Hi, my name is Molly and I am 7. I am very excited to be picked as a junior journalist for Wingham Wildlife Park
I visited Wingham Wildlife Park on a sunny day in August with my Mum and little brother Jacob.
I really enjoyed seeing all the animals at the park but there were so many that I have decided to write about the ones that really caught my eye on the day I visited.
I enjoyed seeing the Otters. They were rolling in the mud and playing in the water doing triple back flips in the water. They looked like they really loved each other and spent the whole time play fighting and sliding in and out of the water. I thought it must have been so nice for them to have all that space and to be able to go in the water when they were feeling warm.
I loved seeing the African grey parrots. One of them kept whistling at us, so my mum whistled back and he whistled even more at us. The other one was saying hello to us. I thought his voice was really funny, it sounded deep and a bit like a robot. Next to the African Greys was a Cockatoo who was digging a hole in the bottom of his home with his feet and beak. He then had a mud bath in the hole he had made.
We really liked the Tropical house with the butterflies, birds and fish. I thought it felt and sounded just like a tropical rainforest. We got to feed the fish which was fun because you can see how giant some of them were when they came up to the top to get the food. In the tropical house there was a pretty bird walking round on the floor who went up to people because he liked their shoelaces. He followed my brother Jacob around because he had strings on his shoes so we got to see how pretty he was up close.
Outside the Tropical house was the bat cave which was dark and peaceful. If you look very hard, you can see big fruit bats hanging upside down and flying around. I spotted some eating a fruit kebab right in front of our eyes. It was really special to see them to close up, I thought their faces looked like mouse faces and they were really cute.
We were really lucky when we saw the Red Panda because at first he was sleeping in his tree and was really hard to spot. But he woke up and walked along his branches to his food bowl which was right in front of us! It was incredible to see a Red Panda that close!
I enjoyed reading about the Chimpanzees and how they were rehomed all the way from America where they had been used in research. I didn’t even know that people did that with animals! I am now happy that these 7 chimpanzees have been rehomed to Wingham Wildlife park and have a special new home. Their new home has an indoors and an outdoors and lots of different levels with bridges and rope swings and lots of different fun things to play with. There was a baby chimpanzee who was really cheeky and we watched her trying to wake up her Mummy and Daddy but climbing all over them and tapping them.
When we visited the penguins, we went downstairs so we could see them under the water. There was one penguin in the water who was being a show off and he kept swimming down to come and say hello to us. We were putting our fingers on the glass and he was swimming down and putting his beak where our fingers were.
My favourite animal that we visited was the lemurs in the walk through enclosure. The lemurs were super friendly and were jumping on to people with backpacks. One jumped straight on my Mums backpack and was holding her hair. I pinched my mum’s rucksack and I nearly got one on my back but not quite this time. The keeper was talking to us about all the lemurs which was really interesting and she told us that one of them could be a bit grumpy and guess what her name was? Molly just like me!
Thanks for inviting us to Wingham, I had the best day and cannot wait to visit again!
Molly xx
