British Wildlife Centre

As a change from all the history we’ve been looking at, today’s excursion was to the British Wildlife Centre at Lingfield. We investigated options of getting there and back by train and bus, and came to the conclusion that the best option would actually be to get a taxi there and back. The taxi firm at Gatwick told us they could take us there, but were unable to pick us up later. No matter, Lingfield boasts taxi companies, I’m sure we could manage.

The place opens at 10:00, so we didn’t need to hurry. In fact we arrived just a couple of minutes after 10, and were informed that the best way to get the most out of our visit was to listen to the talks given each half hour on the various animals that they have in their enclosures…so we did just that, starting with the foxes. The foxes they have are rescues or offspring of rescues and cannot be released back into the wild as they are too habituated to humans.

 Next up was red squirrels. They don’t know exactly how many they have but it’s about 12, including some new kits this year. The keeper told us why they are rare throughout the country (you guessed: grey squirrels), but they are now exporting some of theirs – in fact, the population on Caldey Island that we searched for in vain were from here.

 Scottish wildcats are very rare – there are reckoned to be less than 50 in the wild, the rest are in captivity. They resist all attempts to be tamed – one of the few cats that is totally untameable. Larger than the average domestic cat, they can interbreed with pet cats, so the number of pure-bred animals is still very low. 

It seems that the animals here know when their feeding time is, because as we approached the otter enclosure we saw them scampering about, clearly ready for lunch. The keeper threw bits of fish for them, which one found with ease, the other was a bit less competent at finding the food if it went behind a clump of grass. Otters are recovering as England’s waterways are gradually being cleaned up, and they are a good indicator species for the health of a river. 

We skipped the deer talk in favour of a pasty for lunch, then went to the dell to hear about hedgehogs. They have a rescue hedgehog who is unfazed by people, and he was given a little run out – whilst being carefully watched by the keepers, as they can disappear quite easily in long grass – and we learnt about the history of hedgehogs in England, going from around 30 million in the 1950s to less than 1 million today. In fact, new building regulations now require back garden fences to have holes in them so that hedgehogs can move easily and freely between gardens on new housing developments. 

We toured the wetland area but didn’t really see much other than fish in the water, then decided to get back. Inside the visitor centre they have a display with harvest mice in – we hadn’t spotted any in our initial look around the hedgerow display. 

We called the taxi company, and he told us he’d be there in half an hour. This turned out to be a wild under-estimate – he eventually showed up over an hour later. It’s not like we were in any hurry though, but by the time we got back I felt that a beer was well-deserved!