We went to Lotherton Hall & Bird Gardens at the weekend, between the downpours. Whatever your opinions on captive animals, I feel that animal collections serve at least two good purposes. Firstly, all of the ones I’ve been to are involved in captive breeding programs for some of the world’s rarest animals, usually rare because of human activity. Secondly, it’s very hard to care for something that you’ve never experienced, so these places allow people, especially the young, to see animals close to. Some collections do it well, others less so. Lotherton doesn’t do it badly at all, with breeding programs, an education centre, frequent enclosure improvements and it’s free to get in.
After all that, we didn’t go to the bird garden today, we visited the adjoining deer park and went around the formal gardens. The red deer are well into their rutting season, with four impressively armoured males laying claim to a small territory, each one apparently centred on one of the equally impressive oak trees that abound in the deer park. With the sound of bellowing stags and a hint of mist in the air, we could have been in a highland glen rather than a half hour drive from Leeds city centre (you just had to put the distant cries of the whooping cranes, from the bird garden, out of your mind). You can certainly see why Landseer was so inspired by the stag.
In the formal gardens, the least contrived wildlife spectacle was in full flow – migration. Redwing were streaming over, there must have been four to five hundred, dropping into the trees to feed. This thrush is one of my favourite winter visitors, they arrive from Scandinavia in large numbers. The redwing joined good numbers of titmice, starlings and a single siskin. In the surrounding fields, there were an equally good number of fieldfare – another Scandinavian migrant thrush. All were feeding like their lives depended on it, which they probably do. So maybe we did go to the bird garden after all.
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2 comments:
I caught the word 'migration' in reference to birds in your posting. Now I understand that it's mid-term break in England (I know because I'm listening to Classic FM from BBC Radio as I write and the announcers have mentioned it), so now would be the perfect time to watch --- you guessed it --- 'Travelling Birds'. If you've not already done so, take yourself along to the video shop and give yourself a real treat. I can hear you mumbling to yourself "Gosh, that old woman on the other side of the world is bossy!" Your right, of course; I've had lots of years of practice. Hope you are enjoying the break.
I've just been told that Classic FM doesn't come from the BBC, but I love it anyway. Hope you didn't get heatstroke from today's warm weather. Did it get to 21 degrees?
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