The Tufty Club
PARKSQUIRRELWILDLIFE
If you're as old as me then you'll know what the title is about, if you're not then you can probably use Google to find out.
This week we went to the Peak Wildlife Park which is relatively small, but is sort of a zoo with some "interactive" exhibits such as the Wallabies, the Squirrels and the Lemurs, and when I say interactive mean you can walk through their enclosures so long as you keep to the path. The only difference is that with the Wallabies, you can feed them, which was only less funny as when we fed alpacas, but still funny. I decided that feeding them from my hand was better, unlike my Mrs who wimped out and threw the food onto the floor. Naturally being offered food at head height was their preferred option and I had an unruly queue on my hands, quite literally. I had at one point 3-4 Wallabies trying to get their snouts into my hand and tickling my palm. Of course they were all eager and they were moving about all over the place trying to get the best position. At the same time I was trying to get pictures with my other hand, which was pointless as I couldn't get a then still long enough, plus the fact that they seemed to be interested the camera and after 5 minutes of this I had to clean the lense as it had been subjected to a few Wallaby nose smears. Of course at one point the food ran out which mean that they using their claws (albeit very gently) to lift themselves to to my head height to see if I had any more food, which was also quite distracting when I was trying to take a picture. Still very funny and worth a go if you get chance.
Needless to say this isn't a picture of a Wallaby, it's of a red squirrel which was busying itself getting a nut from a box and then running away to hid it, and then going back again for another nut. This little chap was very difficult to take a picture of, I think I could have helped myself by increasing my depth of field and upping the ISO, but he's quick an makes a lot of sudden movements, way faster than my focusing works, in fact there were two that would have been perfect if it weren't for the fact that the auto-focus thought that the background was a better subject.