Monkey World

Location: Wareham, Dorset.

After many years of promising Sal I finally managed to take her to Monkey World in Dorset. We arrived just as the park opened and once inside found a lovely memorial path dedicated to Jim Cronin. Once past the path we made our way past some small monkeys as we headed for the Orang-utans.

The large Orang-utans were all hiding on the far side of the enclosure so we made our way round to them, only for them to go inside. The babies were in the nursery next door and they were full of mischief. One was poking a stick through the wooden fence so you could take it then it pulled it back through. I managed to get some great shots of the babies playing and we moved on from there. As we walked around the park we noticed how much room each of the animals has, the chimp families have at least a hectare to play in.

We found a Blue Tit that was nesting in a speaker box, I tried for ages to get a photograph of the bird in flight and only managed a couple of slightly blurry shots.

After a quick bite to eat we headed back to a new Orang-utan nursery that was being open on the day we were there, Sal spotted Jeremy Keeling who is one of the founding members of Monkey World and I grabbed him for a picture and autograph for Sal.

After the opening ceremony we headed for my favorite, the Ring Tailed Lemurs (King Julian), I didn’t realise but they all like to curl up in a big Lemur ball when they are relaxing. Managed to get some great photos of them and made lots of “I like to move it move it ” jokes.