A day out at The National Botanic Gardens of Wales

Date:  28 January 2017
Location:  The National Botanic Gardens of Wales, Middleton Hall, Llanarthne, SA32 8HN

After our bird count on Saturday we decided to venture to The National Botanic Gardens of Wales. The weather was pleasant, a little cloudy, but nice nevertheless. Throughout weekends in January, entry to the gardens was only £3 per person, so brilliant value for money!

The iconic glasshouse of The National Botanic Gardens

Armed with a bag of bird seed (bought at the reception) we went looking for wildlife! Our first stop was the nature reserve and was greeted by several Chaffinches. A inquisitive robin started following us around and almost took seed out of my hand. We also saw some wrens and blackbirds too.

A very friendly robin

My secret weapon!

Male Chaffinch

When we left the nature reserve we came to a large lake and there we spotted a Little Grebe and a Shoveler Duck (2 new birds for my #My200BirdYear list).

Beautiful lake

Shoveler Duck

Little Grebe

From here we headed down to another huge lake - on this one were more Shovelers, Common Teal, Mallard, Coots & Moorhens. It was so beautiful and peaceful, apart from the demanding Mallard who almost ate all my bird feed! ;)

Another beautiful lake

Mallard enjoying some bird seed

Around this area there was quite a few Snowdrops...so pretty x

An awesome sculpture of a bull in the gardens

We continued exploring the gardens and kept our eyes open for anything unusual. Excitingly we stumbled across the relatively new butterfly house and was treated to some beautiful creatures.. .Im not sure of the names of all the butterflies so would be great if you could hep me out in the comment section below...

The amazing Indian Leaf Butterfly (Left) that just looks just like a leaf!

This was my favourite sighting of the day - a Rothschild Silkmoth...

...and this is him from the other side

A Blue Tiger Striped Butterfly on some fruit

Blue Morpho butterfly

Mormon caterpillar

Another caterpillar, unsure what it is?

A pretty Tiger-Striped Longwing Butterfly

Another leaf like butterfly

Glasswing Butterfly

The butterfly house was amazing! I cant wait to go back in the future to see what other species they have, I do know they have had Atlas Moths too. From here we headed to the glasshouse dome to see what amazing flowers we could see...

The huge glasshouse

I am not sure of the names, but the next few photos are some of the exotic flowers we came across in the dome. So many colours and texture I could spend hours taking photos in there...

There wasn't just flowers and plants in there but lots of Sparrows too :)

Check out the Fly Agaric I found (this was in the fungi exhibition in the glasshouse, very cool!) 

Dan and I have a quick selfie with the mushrooms...magic!

Our time in the Gardens was coming to an end so we made our way back to the car park. It has been awhile since we had visited here and I must confess the place is awesome. So much to see and I cant wait to return in a few months time when the spring flowers are in bloom.

A lovely daffodil

A dunnock bids us goodbye near the carpark