Port Lympne Wild Animal Park: Red Panda

More cuddly (toy-like) in large.
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It had to be a red panda...
We had a splendid day at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, near Hythe. It is half zoo, half safari park, and has an amazing range of animals (many are endangered species, bred as part of conservation projects) kept in large enclosures, and seemed pretty cheery all round (which certainly isn't true of many zoos).

We saw wolves, tigers, African hunting dogs ("hunting"), ornamental carp, wood pigeons (I know!), a sleepy lynx, the red pandas (*sigh*), Guinea baboons, Colobus monkeys, gorillas, water buffalo, axis deer, greater kudu, roan antelope, black rhino, eland (with flies), giraffes (up close!), a Defassa waterbuck with a funny horn, an ostrich, Dungeness power station, a pygmy marmoset, a kestrel wind-hovering, Lechwe (both typical and in leucistic form, as well as a little fawn), wildebeest, Pallas's cats, fossas, fishing cats (fishing), a cheetah, coatis, tapirs (eye to eye), golden-bellied mangabeys (female and male), greater bamboo lemurs hugging, Javan langurs, as well as sleeping Barbary lions and snow leopards.
PHEW, the links were a mission (what was I thinking?!). That was just the animals that I got OK photos of: some photos were through fences (um, tigers?) which wasn't ideal, but f/2.8 helped, and I quite enjoyed some of the strange fence effects... It was an amazing day: the sun shone, the company was excellent, and the animals and park were beautiful.

All of my holiday pictures can be found here (or Lympne pics are right from here).