Highland Wildlife Park, Aviemore, Scotland

A lovely day today at the Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore.

Arriving around 11:30am we wandered first to see the Great Grey Owl. He was super cool, admittedly weird how they move their heads almost all the way around, but still cool!

From here we saw the Snow Monkeys or Japanese Macaque, some having lots of fun with their babies.

Next was the Amur Tiger, Dominika. These were previously known as the Siberian Tiger but were renamed in the 1990's, as the last known tigers had long disappeared from Siberia. The are the largest of all the big cats and there are only around 450 of them left in the wild, making them endangered. There are actually more Amur Tigers in zoos than in the wild!

We saw the huge Musk Ox from a distance on our way to the polar bears! I have no idea how these guys cope in the warmer weather, but they do live outdoors. In fact they were very much enjoying the sun when we saw them!

The Artic Fox was next, however he was hiding for the day so we missed out on seeing him!

Seeing the Snow Leopards was really cool. There were four of them, three sleeping and one pacing up and down. Very cool.

Right next to this was the Eagle Owl and the Lynx. The Lynx was very cool too, wandering around showing off to everyone.

The Capercaillie and Scottish Wildcat were next. The Scottish Wildcat is pretty much just a slightly different looking cat.

After this over to the European Forest Reindeer and European Wolves who were having a blast sleeping!

From here we got into our car and went through the 'drive-through' section a couple of times. Here we saw Bukhara Deer, Red Deer, Przewalski's Horse, Vicuna, European Elk and European Bison.

We went and parked again after our drive through, just to see if we could spy the Wolverine, and we were in luck!! The male (there are four in the enclosure and we only saw this one right at the end) came out from hiding and showed off plenty by wandering around right in front of us in his enclosure! Very cool indeed.

On exiting the park we saw Bactrian Camel and four Yak just chilling!

All in all it was a great day out. All the enclosures are manageable in probably half a day if you wanted to, but it was nice to be able to take our time and enjoy the park, rather than rush around trying to see everything.