Bird Land

Last week my family and I jumped in the car and travelled down into the Cotswolds. Mum and Alex have got a "little" obsession with penguins and, when they found out that Boughton on the Water's Bird Land is home to the only group of king penguins in England and Wales, we just had to make the trip!

The penguin enclosure is almost directly next to the entrance. We raced straight there and watched as they all slept and waddled around.

It turns out, penguins like to sleep quite a lot!

We were lucky enough to have walked in just in time for their morning feed. The smaller humbolt penguins dived straight into the pool, speeding under the water in search of sprats. King penguins are, as the keeper told us, a little bit lazy and just carried on sleeping.

Sleeping in supremely awkward positions!

We finally managed to pull ourselves away from the penguins (finally!) and went on a tour of the rest of Birdland.

They have a surprisingly large amount of birds there, of all different sizes and breeds.

The next enclosure that we happened upon belonged to the flamingos.

What's not to love about pink birds!

Even if they are really grumpy.

Did you know that its algae that makes the flamingos have their beautiful pink colour? Because we don't have the same algae here in Britain as occurs naturally in their habitats we have to feed them special pellets to make sure that captive flamingos have the same colour.

And did you know that the oldest flamingo to live in captivity was 84!?!

Blimey!

After watching the keeper feed the flamingos we moved on for a tour around the rest of Birdland, including their Jurrasic Adventure.

An avid watcher of Walking With Dinosaurs, I quite enjoyed looking at the bad, fake dinosaurs, even if it was a trail for kids.

However, my favourite part of the Jurrasic Adventure was the fact that little hides are set up all the way around so that birdwatchers of all ages can try to catch a glimpse of British birds in their natural habitat.

Now, rampaging children and easily-spooked birds don't often mix that well.....there was barely anything within a hundred feet of the trail. However, I did manage to catch this shot of a sweet little robin.

I think I've been bitten by the wildlife photographer bug! Especially after going to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year viewing at the Natural History Museum earlier this month.

We carried on around, snapping pictures of all the birds that we could see. I think its safe to say that I went a little bit crazy...

I think that this guy might have been my favourite of the whole day. What crazy hair!

There are some truly beautiful birds at Birdland. If you're an amateur wildlife photographer (or like me, you like pretending to be one!) then I would reccommend a visit, particularly to the penguins. Not only are they the only group of King penguins in England BUT they're super easy to photograph...they don't even bat an eyelid.