Durrell Wildlife Park

I went to the zoo established by Gerald Durrell in Jersey. It is focused on conservation of endangered species and I felt it had the animals in more natural settings than other zoos I've been to. Being a weekday during the school term, the zoo was pleasingly quiet and it made a change not being surrounded by screaming children. These Chilean flamingos were on a large lake which they shared with some geese. I was able to get very close to them and they weren't phased, they just continued squabbling and flapping and doing flamingo things.

There were some other flamingos, Greater Flamingos, on another lake. To get a good view of these ones, I had to walk along a boardwalk through some dense vegetation. By the time I got to the flamingos, there were no other people in sight. After watching the flamingos for a few minutes, I heard a rustling in the trees. I looked up and there were four of these guys creeping up on me. They are emperor tamarinds. It felt a bit like a scene from a very low budget horror movie with nobody else around and the little monkeys getting closer and closer. After some investigation though, they realised I wasn't going to give them any food and scampered off again.

The meerkats were entertaining to watch and they'd given the Asian short-clawed otters some grapes to play with which was very entertaining for them and also for me, watching them.

It was probably my best ever zoo experience in terms of getting close to the animals and being quiet.