Bad Mergentheim Wildpark (I)

To provide some relief from the "looking at medieval towns" for the kids, we went to a wildlife park which is only about 30 minutes down the road. It was great to see European animals in a wildlife park which was similar in style to the Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo, except that the animals were a lot closer and it wasn't as big.

We arrived in time to follow a feeding tour, which was great for a couple of reasons... a) as we started out, there were only about 20 people on the tour, and b) the animals were out and about! The downside... it was all spoken in German, so we just had to follow the crowd when they moved on.

We saw a number of mountain goats with various horn arrangements, and varying states of hairiness, deer, owls, otters, brown bears (AMAZING), lynx, vultures (AMAZING), a pack of 30 or so wolves (AMAZING), wild boar, raccoons and ferrets, and wildcats. The beavers were in hiding, so we missed out on seeing them.

You were able to walk through the bird enclosures, so we were really close to the birds. The feeding of the vultures was incredible. The birds fly across the enclosure to attack the meat that is being thrown out, to the point where I had to duck as the vulture flew overhead. I had no idea how big they were.

There were two brown bears who were being fed apples. They had this amazing way of scooping them out of the pond or rock crevice the apple had landed in, and then balanced the apple on the back of their paw like a dinner table and then ate the apple off that.

The wolves too were incredible. One or two heads popped over the ridge whilst the feeder was introducing them. She then walked through the centre of the flat enclosure area dropping meat out of the bucket, and within seconds the entire pack had materialised as if from nowhere. It was quite magical.

The kids got to go into the enclosure to feed the goats and we were also able to feed the deer, until the buck decided feeding time was over and chased them all away!

I am not sure if it was the opportunity to see new animals that I haven't seen before, but certainly the closeness to the animals combined with the lack of people, but I would go so far as to say that this was the best zoo we have ever been to!Read more