Beale Park Beale Wildlife Park 2022

Lafone said:
Had a really lovely day out at Beale today. Mostly sunny with just a couple of showers late in the day. First visit and I enjoyed it a lot. The gardens were great with good paths and ponds / lakes. Lots of places to sit with a coffee and the whole place feels mellow and a good space to chill as well as see some interesting animals. Lots of play areas for kids but well separated so best of both worlds in that regard.

Enjoyed the variety of animals on show. As a mongoose fan the banded mongoose were great as I haven’t been able to get good photos of them before. I liked the layout of the raccoons, prairie dogs, meerkat, mongoose and Guinea pig enclosures which all run opposite the llamas - good sized spaces with lots to do and easy viewing. There’s also a good platform to see the spaces from.

I very much enjoyed the large free flight aviaries with the variety of birds - lots of activity in all of them. Well laid out and lots to see.

There is obviously lots of work going on with some enclosures labelled as animals coming soon - so things to look forward to. Enjoyed seeing the amount of development with a recent looking enclosure for snowy owls a nice example. Some enclosures are a bit garden fence / shed edge like but it didn’t spoil the enjoyment as the animals still have good spaces with lots to do. The only animals that didn’t get out of bed were the raccoons - got good views of everything else from porcupines through otters, capybara and lemurs. I’d never seen a young rock hyrax before so that was great.

The Scottish wildcats were very nice to see and have a spacious area with several different enclosures to go between via some wired walkways - got some good sightings of them.

The new nocturnal house was a definite highlight - well laid out and I found the enclosure design excellent. I’d say small and perfectly formed. A chest height transparent wall to each of the big spaces means you can see into the enclosures to admire the cuscus and the slender loris without any glass glaring back at you at all.

First sighting for me of the slender loris in particular - lovely. Once eyes had adjusted to the dark there were some really active animals to enjoy. The naked mole rats are very well lit. Obviously the beaded lizard is completely enclosed as opposed to in a part open enclosure but it was still easy to see in.

The lighting in the ceiling has a sort of star effect and coupled with some cluster effect lights (that look a bit like nebulous clouds with little storms going on in them) they lend the whole thing a good ambience. The background night noises are atmospheric without being madly loud or intrusive. I enjoyed the electronic screens displaying the animal information - really easy to learn all about the animals without being too bright or intrusive or hard to see. All round excellent new house and I’d recommend a trip to see it.

The other highlight of the day for me were the lynx in their spacious new enclosure - spent a lot of time there in between park circuits and was lucky enough to see them being fed which was a treat. Lovely cats in a great setting - enjoyed the mix of rocks and trees and there were lots of places for them to hide and choose to be visible or not which I like (indeed the female lynx Nox was in a tree nearly the whole time but fortunately emerged for her turkey dinner).

Overall a great day out. I do enjoy a well done, well cared for smaller animal collection in a lovely setting and I’ll be back for this one.
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Thanks for the lovely review, and your kind words about the Twilight Zone...it's been hard work, so I'm really pleased it's going down as positively as it is! (although a keeper told me yesterday that a member of the public said they didn't like that it was dark!:rolleyes:).

As a relatively new team, we're on a big mission to improve things across the whole park....next to go are those garden fence aviaries!;)
 
mrcriss said:
'Nother new animal in today.....

Young highland bull brought in from Jimmy's Farm. Still to decide upon a name...probably either Hamish or Angus.:D
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How about Carter? It was the Carter's Steam Fair last tour this year and the last stop of the tour was Reading
 
Silas, the tayra, moved into his new accommodation today. I’m on holiday right now so didn’t get to enjoy the moment. It’s been a fair while coming as complications with obtaining and fitting such large heavy panes of glass delayed the development a little, but this sets off a chain of other moves within the park.:D
 
Green winged macaws have been moved into the refurbished old tayra enclosure today giving them much more height and a longer flight. Pedro won’t fly (probably can, but just never has….someone’s ex-pet), but he still has a lot of high spaces to climb over.

More things moving next week!;)
 
Visited weekend before last. I really liked the new nocturnal house, the cuscus were very active. Not seen that species move so much! A big fan of those.
Slender Loris was also out and about. The Heloderma being in there made no sense to me really and would be better switched out for some small mammals, a small rodent maybe or small marsupial.
There was a couple of empty enclosures with coming soon signs, interested to see/hear what the additions will be, particularly the enclosure that used to house the Patagonian Conure, which is next to the big Ibis aviary with the swamp hens in.
My first time visiting whilst the Tayra has been present and he is an excellent one! Really nice animal and one of the largest males I've seen.

I am glad the ring tail lemurs have been given more space but I think they are a boring species and preferred their enclosure before when it was a mixed bird aviary.

Glad to see the capybara active, despite the cold weather and I hope that pampas area is redeveloped as it always seemed a bit of a waste on my previous visits.

I am sad the Corallus ruschenbergerii is not on display anymore, I hope it did not pass away. I keep a lot of unusual boa species and they are one of the ones I have always wanted to add to the collection, I'd be interested to hear where he/she went.
 
ZooAtHome said:
Visited weekend before last. I really liked the new nocturnal house, the cuscus were very active. Not seen that species move so much! A big fan of those.
Slender Loris was also out and about. The Heloderma being in there made no sense to me really and would be better switched out for some small mammals, a small rodent maybe or small marsupial.
There was a couple of empty enclosures with coming soon signs, interested to see/hear what the additions will be, particularly the enclosure that used to house the Patagonian Conure, which is next to the big Ibis aviary with the swamp hens in.
My first time visiting whilst the Tayra has been present and he is an excellent one! Really nice animal and one of the largest males I've seen.

I am glad the ring tail lemurs have been given more space but I think they are a boring species and preferred their enclosure before when it was a mixed bird aviary.

Glad to see the capybara active, despite the cold weather and I hope that pampas area is redeveloped as it always seemed a bit of a waste on my previous visits.

I am sad the Corallus ruschenbergerii is not on display anymore, I hope it did not pass away. I keep a lot of unusual boa species and they are one of the ones I have always wanted to add to the collection, I'd be interested to hear where he/she went.
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Hi there! Glad you liked The Twilight Zone and some of our other developments. Though it’s a shame that you find an endangered species to be boring….I realize that ring tailed lemurs are fairly commonplace in captivity, but they’re really suffering in the wild, and having a strong captive population could prove to be essential!

Silas, our tayra, is a handsome boy indeed! You’ll have to wait and see what goes in next to him….haven’t finished the front of the enclosure yet as it’ll be the same as Silas’s. ;)

The pampas walk area has become our little South American section with Capys, tapir, Rhea and Chacoan mara. This will remain just about done for the time being so we can focus on other areas.

The tree boa you mentioned went to a college somewhere in Rotherham or
Doncaster (can’t remember). We looked at the offering in the reptile house and found it very snake heavy in our limited space, so we needed a re-jig. As that snake was quite feisty and no use for our encounters, we decided to rehome to somewhere better suited. She is now being used as an snake for teaching more advanced students, living in a lovely spacious enclosure!
Shortly there’ll be an enclosure done in the reptile house for 2 species of lizard, and a new amphibian coming in too.;)
 
Out of curiosity @mrcriss - does the site still have raccoon? Signage around the Park would indicate so - but I only saw coati in their area and only signs for coati, and not raccoons.
 
dillotest0 said:
Out of curiosity @mrcriss - does the site still have raccoon? Signage around the Park would indicate so - but I only saw coati in their area and only signs for coati, and not raccoons.
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The raccoon was 18 years old and was sadly put to sleep quite recently due to ill health. The signage has all come down, but the website might take a little longer to fix.
 
When the last coatis die off, I wonder if there are plans for the enclosure...
But I don't feel like inquiring further.
 
mrcriss said:
Hi there! Glad you liked The Twilight Zone and some of our other developments. Though it’s a shame that you find an endangered species to be boring….I realize that ring tailed lemurs are fairly commonplace in captivity, but they’re really suffering in the wild, and having a strong captive population could prove to be essential!

Silas, our tayra, is a handsome boy indeed! You’ll have to wait and see what goes in next to him….haven’t finished the front of the enclosure yet as it’ll be the same as Silas’s. ;)

The pampas walk area has become our little South American section with Capys, tapir, Rhea and Chacoan mara. This will remain just about done for the time being so we can focus on other areas.

The tree boa you mentioned went to a college somewhere in Rotherham or
Doncaster (can’t remember). We looked at the offering in the reptile house and found it very snake heavy in our limited space, so we needed a re-jig. As that snake was quite feisty and no use for our encounters, we decided to rehome to somewhere better suited. She is now being used as an snake for teaching more advanced students, living in a lovely spacious enclosure!
Shortly there’ll be an enclosure done in the reptile house for 2 species of lizard, and a new amphibian coming in too.;)
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Thank you for the reply, I meant no offence by my comments about the lemurs. I understand their plight and the issues they face but they are very well presented in zoos whereas some of the bird species that previously occupied that aviary are less so. I also just generally prefer birds. I feel the same way about ring tail lemurs as I do about meerkats, general zoo animals.

Silas was great, I believe he came from my friends private collection.
 
Six banded armadillos joined our Green winged macaws in the old tayra enclosure today, offering them much more space with a large outdoor enclosure. They spent the whole day digging a burrow under a big log and tearing into rotten wood.

Another in-park movement and new species tomorrow!
 
mrcriss said:
Six banded armadillos joined our Green winged macaws in the old tayra enclosure today, offering them much more space with a large outdoor enclosure. They spent the whole day digging a burrow under a big log and tearing into rotten wood.

Another in-park movement and new species tomorrow!
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It would be great to see picture of these new developments if you get the chance please :)
 
TNT said:
It would be great to see picture of these new developments if you get the chance please :)
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There'll be a post about it on Facebook if you follow our page. You're just getting a bit of early info;)
 
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