At the end of the March 2021 I decided to do a small trip to the southern Lapland, see some sun and visit the Ranua Zoo. Stayed in Ranua for five days and did some excursions to the surrounding wildenes.
The main thing to see was of course the polar bears that live in the Wild Life Park, but also to see what else this place has to offer.
This post will mainly be another epic picture dump of the Ranua Zoo part of the trip and the post that will follow will tell what other things I found and did in Ranua during those five days.
So lets begin – Welcome to the Zoo…
Path from the Zoo main gate into the adventure.
It all begins at the home of the otter.
Cozy fella sleeping in their warm home.
What creature shall we find from here?
Some beavers. Some playing and swimmimg…
…some sleeping in their hideout.
Path to the small mammals hut.
There was supposed to be many other little critters, but other than this mice (and couple it’s friends) were hiding or sleeping.
From the small animals area towards the birds.
Snowy owl male.
Snowly owl female.
More fluffu owls.
Cozy owls.
Big owl.
Actually an eurasian eagle-owl and one of the largets owls in the world.
Some hawk I think.
An eagle – a golden eagle maybe.
A raven.
Swan in closeup.
Some geese.
More geese and swans.
White tailed sea eagles maybe. Brought in to the zoo to be taken care as they had some injury or something that made them unable to fly.
The pallas’s cat aka manul was sleeping in it’s hideout.
Ice cream?
No ice cream in winter time.
A place to eat and grill your own food.
There were also several other grill places and resting areas for visitors to eat their snacks and warm up their own food, tho all the kiosks, etc. were closed cause of the pandemic and slow winter season.
The map – approaching the polar bears.
Some boars – the boss boar hog had it’s own area on the left and rest of the herd at the right side.
Dem pigs.
More in a close-up.
The man.
For some reason the sparrows enjoyed the company of the wild boars.
Sitting and flying around in packs.
The polar bear chillin.
Just strolling around.
And some fur treatment.
And more cozy things.
Ready for a nap?
Next to the polar bears was also a brown bear in it’s playground.
It has just woken from the hibernation some time ago.
Dem wolves wolfing around.
Some crows hanging around for some left overs from the wolves’ meal.
The feast continues when the wolves move away.
The dhole were cautious and shy creatures.
Hiding and watching from the distance.
Some lynx chilling.
Another lynx keeping an eye of the surroundings.
Herd of deer.
Some smaller deer creature.
And more deer creatures.
Just a moose chilling in a spring sun.
Red fox sleeping in it’s nest.
Still a musk ox.
Some reindeer in the spring sun.
And even more reindeer.
The visit was a nice experience. Because of the Covid situation and travel restrictions there weren’t many people around. Saw maybe 20 other people altogether during those two or three hours spent in the zoo.
Weather was mostly nice and sunny, tho a small light rain shower went over, but it was brief and over in 15 min or so.
Some of the animals were still in their winter shelter (like the cranes) and sadly the zoo’s wolverine had died some time ago, so no wolverine to be seen.
Zoos and similar are always kinda two sided experience. On the other hand I love to see animals like these in close. On the other hand I still kinda think that they belong to the wilderness where they are free to roam around as they see fit.
Zoo can still teach you a lot. One can download an app or rent an audio guide and learn many things about these animals as one walks around the zoo and observes the animals.
In the part 2 we shall see what else Ranua had to offer.
Hiidenkorpi 