jane

Walking into the hot humid atmosphere, with floor to ceiling plants I knew instantly that I was going to enjoy this. The myriad of shapes and textures combined with just about every shade of green known to man meant that I was in photography heaven. 

 Plants both on land and underwater have provided me with some of my favourite photographs and the rainforest environment produces some of the weirdest and fascinating plant specimens I have yet encountered on my travels like this amazing pitcher plant. 

I was looking after my nephew and niece for the weekend who live near Newbury. Whilst my niece at 17 needs no looking after…..in fact she tends to look after me on these occasions….. I needed something to entertain my eight year old nephew on one of the days. I had been trying to find something that would appeal to us both and had never visited this place but for some years had seen the signs for it every time I drove along the A4. Fortunately the idea appealed…probably caught him at a good moment! Although only a small set up it was well organised.  In addition to a huge variety of flora from various rainforests around the world they had a few animals as well, some juvenile crocodiles, terrapins and turtles, a few snakes, pygmy marmosets and some delightful tiny black monkeys from Madagascar. While I generally hate to see any animal caged purely for the entertainment of humans some of these animals appeared to be connected to various projects about endangered animals, which begins to go someway to justify their confinement. There were also several types of free ranging birds and butterflies who  had the monopoly on some fantastic blooms.

However, I couldn’t understand why a toucan was caged (unless it was to spare any loss of fingers to the unwary child). I tend to find that the more creatures I get to see in the wild the less happy I am about caged birds and animals unless there is a very good reason for it. I just don’t think that any cage or pen despite every good intention can replicate the size and type of freedom that animals have living in the wild.    

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 10:31 am and is filed under Non Diving Wanderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.