RESIDENTS of Birdworld paid a visit to the Sandy Hill Bungalow’s annual general meeting in December.

The Bungalow community centre in Upper Hale enticed more than 100 locals to the meeting by welcoming a range of animal guests from the wildlife park.

Cathy Burroughs, centre manager at The Bungalow said: “We wanted to encourage people to come and see what activities we offer and we ended up reaching out to Birdworld to help open the doors to the community encouraging people to come along and supporting a local business at the same time.

“It was very busy, people were able to tough the animals and ask lots of questions about them.”

Among the animals in attendance were two birds, Whisper the barn owl and Xingu the macaw, as well as a gecko, a rabbit and a snake.

“The children really enjoyed the birds, they were beautiful and had lovely soft feathers and the children liked stroking them,” Cathy added.

“Many were also fascinated by Monty, the royal python.”

The two birds were not so popular with everyone however. The Mayor of Farnham, Pat Frost who was in attendance, was, according to Cathy, not so keen on the birds and kept her distance from them.

For those nervous of the birds, Barry the rabbit and Dave the leopard gecko were also available to pet.

This was the first such event The Bungalow has held to mark its annual meeting, which had previously seen much lower rates of attendance.

Cathy continued: “We were very pleased, it was a good turnout.”

The Bungalow is now planning more activities for the whole community, including a fun day planned for June 18.

“We will see how the fun day goes and hopefully we will get feedback as to what people would like to see in the future,” said Cathy, “and I wouldn’t rule out having Birdwold back again!”