I promised you holiday snaps, but things keep delaying me. Here are a few creatures we met on our latest visit to the Lakes...
A family of swans. The young cygnet must be almost fully grown but has yet to develop its adult feathers.
We set out most days to feed the ducks and swans we'd met on previous holidays. Being earlier in the season, many of these were further down the shore in Bowness where the crowds could keep them in bread crumbs all day long. Apart from the family of swans seen in the first picture, we had to settle for feeding cheeky seagulls like the one above.
You can see understand meerkats have become so embraced by the Evil World of Advertising. They are exceedingly cute.
As are these chaps, the ring-tailed lemurs from Madagascar. Another red-ruffed lemur lived with them. Amazingly acrobatic creatures.
A family of zebras had just given birth to a new foal. Sadly they wouldn't let us close enough to the baby for a picture.
Emus in action.
And a brawny bison. OK, I'll come clean. Most of these critters aren't living wild in the Lake District - imagine if they were. We encountered them instead at
Trotters World Of Animals in Bassenthwaite. Well worth a visit. While there, I held a python and a blue-tongued skink (no photos, sadly - worried the flash might piss them off!). I declined the chance to hold a tarantula though.
A dancing crane. This fella was a real show-off. We missed the falconry display at Trotters, but were lucky enough to stop off at the Yorkshire Dales Falconry Centre on our way home where met met some very entertaining owls... that's me in the bottom picture with a friendly little barn owl on my arm.
