Barbados Green Monkey Portraits at the Wildlife Reserve — 7 photos inside, plus 3 GIFS!

The Barbados Wildlife Reserve is a four acre enclosed mahogany forest in St. Peter next door to Farley Hill and Grenade Hall.

This was my favourite shot of the day.

It was originally set up as a green monkey conservation and study site in 1982 by Canadian primatologist Jean Baulu and his wife. The Green Monkey was brought to Barbados from West Africa in the 17th century. There are other animals living at the reserve now including patagonian Mara, small deer, iguana, peacocks and loads of red-footed tortoises.

The entrance fee is $23.50 BBD (2 BBD is 1 USD) per person. Once inside, you get a small map to show where everything is housed, but most of the animals are walking free. Notice the large sign "These Animals Are Wild!" and take it to heart. Even though you can get right up close and personal to the animals, especially the monkeys, you'd be wise not to try touching any of them. They will bite!

The troop of monkeys live in the area, but they are not enclosed within the reserve. They come and go as they please, usually at feeding time! Afterwards we saw them all heading back towards the 'wild' of Grenade Hall forest.

We spent a few hours at the Wildlife Reserve yesterday. It was a bit overcast but cleared up shortly after we arrived.

Feeding time for the animals is 2:00, which is when tours and everyone else comes... As you may know, I hate crowds. So, the best time to go is for 2:30 when the first wave of humans get bored and start wandering down the brick paths leaving plenty of room for plucky photographers to get good close up shots of the eating animals.

After you're done, you can get some drinks or food at the little restaurant / canteen area.

Here are some of the photos that I took yesterday. Hope you like!

There were a lot of young monkeys and mothers with babies.

Most of the time the babies held on tightly to mummy but occasionally they would come out and scurry around.

Some woman tried to touch one of the babies being held by the mother. This is a bad plan, just by the way.
It could have been much, much worse but the mother just swatted the human's hand away the way that a human would swat away a pest.

You can get extremely close.

They will let you know if you're too close, by baring teeth or making a quick move towards you. Best to stay at least an arm's length away, though. That seems to be a comfortable distance for most of them. Have a healthy respect for the animals, but they are very used to humans being around and are very accommodating.

If you ever visit Barbados, make sure the Wildlife Reserve is on your list of stops.

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