Butterflies

The first area in which we found ourselves was the butterfly house, warm and humid just how they like it and requiring me to simply observe the pretty little things for a few minutes until my camera lens had adjusted to the climate and stopped fogging over. I won’t pretend to know what any of the species were – I can just about identify Red Admirals, Peacocks, Commas, Brimstones, and Cabbage Whites – but some sleuthing now indicates that amongst the ones present during our visit to Earnley there may have been butterflies of type Owl, Northern Pearly Eye, Julia, and Malachite. I’m sure there’s a lepidopterist out there who could identify these butterflies for certain.

Birds

From the butterfly house we entered the caged surroundings of the bird enclosure. Like the butterflies these were birds of the more tropical and exotic kind, not typically found in deepest West Sussex. Also like the butterflies I can’t begin to identify all the different types of bird we saw other than cockatoos, which I think are the white ones. Are you an ornithologist? Do you want to add to the sum knowledge of the human species and identify the birds in the photos? I didn’t think so but it was worth a try.

Because the enclosures for both birds and butterflies in Earnley were surrounded by glass to keep a stable temperature, once you passed through the protective plastic doorways you were fully amongst the creatures and they were free to fly past your head or, as in the picture below, sit on your shoe and pose for a photo.

Garden

The next area in Earnley was a more conventional garden containing both plants and flowers you might expect to see in the local climate as well as a dry area housing cacti. I’m not even going to attempt to work out what any of the flowers or plants are as my floral knowledge extends roughly as far as classifying everything as either a daisy or something else.

I am fond of a cactus, partly, I suspect, because they look reasonably difficult to kill and I’m pretty sure I’d be hopeless at keeping any more demanding plant or flower alive.

Beasts

A small area for reptiles in the main completed the wildlife portion of Earnley. First up was one of my wife’s favourite animals (she used to have one when she was younger and still goes on about getting another), the tortoise.

As for me, I’m quite fond of the prehistoric look of some of the larger reptiles and an iguana in particular caught my eye. There’s something fascinating about their skin and the textures clearly present on their ancient-looking bodies.

Nostalgia Museum

In addition to the various forms of fauna and flora there was a small but very packed museum of retro items; I’m a sucker for old memorabilia, toys and games of yesteryear, vintage photos and magazines, etc. so this was joy to wander around. Photos from that visit will appear at some point on this site at which point this post will be updated to include a link to what we saw there and then too. And then we should probably get around to paying Earnley another visit just to see what else other than its name has changed since the last time we took a look at it.