Feeding the Penguins!

James loves penguins. To be fair, I can see why…they are incredibly cute! When I was searching for the idea Christmas present to get him, my Mum discovered that Sewerby Hall were offering an animal encounter for two to go and feed the penguins. Obviously, this was the ideal gift, and seeing him open it on Skpye on Christmas Day was great! On 31st January, we had James’ acceptance of a graduate job to celebrate, and a day to ourselves before starting university again the following week. It was an early start to give the penguins their breakfast, but it was worth it!

Sewerby Hall has nine Humboldt penguins, which are natively found in South America, so it’s a bit chilly for them in the UK! We were met by the Zoo Keeper, John, who introduced us to them and answered our questions. But first was the task that we were dreading…preparing the fish.

Neither me or James eat fish, so we weren’t looking forward to this bit. It wasn’t as bad as we were expecting though, it just involved making a hole big enough to insert a vitamin and a salt tablet into the fish. Then it was on to the fun bit!

Feeding time! Some of the penguins were very enthusiastic to meet us (and their breakfast…)

There were some very greedy penguins who were trying to take all of it for themselves! Most of them were very gentle when they took it from us though…we didn’t lose any fingers!

We soon got over our dislike for the fish when we had a big croud of hungry penguins waiting to be fed!

And we proved very popular with the penguins.

Some penguins took a little more convincing though. The picture about shows James with Flipflop (she has a foot deformation which makes her walk funny.) She was the youngest of the penguins, and was not hand reared like most of the others, so she doesn’t like being around people like the others do…she was pretty scared of me but James was thrilled when he won her over!

Even the Zoo Keeper was amazed that Flipflop had made a new friend!

After feeding the penguins we got to wander around the rest of the zoo and gardens, to discover what other animals were to be found. Here is one of the alpacas!

Some goats.

A robin! Not exclusively kept at the zoo but he seemed happy to make his home there.

These deer aren’t daft, they were sheltering from the strong winds…the grounds are on top of a cliff right next to the sea!

We wandered around looking everywhere for the llamas…I wanted to see them! We found them eventually though.

It was still quite early after we had looked around everywhere, so we went on to a pub for some dinner, before continuing on to Whitby and spending a day near the sea and having a look in the shops! It was a great experience and it was nice to have a day out together without having to worry about university work for a change! James had a great time and I’m thrilled he liked his Christmas present! The Hall itself and the tearoom were having some work done to them so they were shut, but we received a discount voucher to spend in the tearoom, so it looks like we will be paying the penguins another visit shorty…we just might wait until it is a bit warmer this time!