Friday 30 July 2010
My brother arrives today, he lives in the southern most part of the South Island in New Zealand, I think it is about as close to the Antarctic as you can get without being in the ocean, so Bluff would be a good name for the town he lives in. My sister Anna has visited him there, I have not been that far as yet, the flight is just too off putting. Perhaps when we can ‘beam me up Scotty’ I would go!!

He arrived in Scotland last week and was staying with Anna, and now is coming to me and then going to our cousin before going back to Scotland and then flying home again. I guess I had better go shopping today as there is not a lot in the larder that anyone would care to eat!

The Griffon Vulture is doing well, he is managing albeit with a crooked foot, and Neil saw him two evenings ago and was happy with his improvement. We are using him for a DNA trial to help the vultures in India right now – he is delighted as it means he is getting Venison for five days, then Lamb for five days, and then beef, plus his usual rat, so he is happy to be the experiment! We are collecting the droppings, freezing them and we are going to see if we can tell using DNA what he has been eating. Then we can use the same technique with the vultures in South East Asia and that will tell us how high the risk factor is for picking up Diclofenac because we will know what they are eating and if there are any changes over time – clever eh!!

Holly and Adam cut out and glued a glove each, and pretty good they look too. Holly borrowed her Dad’s old electric sewing machine, but it did not like the thread, however if she moved the wheel by hand, it worked fine. So I am looking for an old Singer hand driven machine – good old Ebay!! – Oh - did not have to find one, Joan just got one for Simon!

The young Goshawk has been released, the Sparrowhawk with the wing injury is looking less of a good candidate and we have had another young Kestrel in, this time with a head injury and possibly a keel injury, right now it just needs to get over the shock and then we can do more.

Cremorne is still being difficult so we are still just handling her to get her manners better before flying her again. Adam’s new Lanner is behaving well and my new Hybrid is a very nice person. Holly has called her new Harris Hawk Domino which I guess is an apple type, I hope so anyway.

Finally we got the PA system working it took new body packs and microphones, but what a joy to get them up and running again. You just never realise how important a piece of equipment is until you don’t have it and we had two weeks of misery with the old ones before we got it ‘sorted’. I took great pleasure in hitting the old body packs with the heaviest sledge hammer we could find, Adam did the other one, you can’t say I don’t share things!

2 comments:

Phil Williams said...

Blimey this is an early post for you! My guess is, it was raining this afternoon in Newent?

Jemima Parry-Jones MBE said...

nope, no rain here, we have had none for weeks now, apart from a spattering

Hello

I have to say that keeping a weblog can at times become compulsive and at other times a chore. Sometimes I am berrated for not keeping it up and sometimes I get wonderful comments from people who follow the news of the Centre.

It is fun to share the daily goings on here, some good and some bad, some funny and some sad, but all a part of our daily lives.
And as I said before its a pretty cool to be here and it is a great place to visit, you should try coming and watching the birds and meeting the staff and of course the dogs.

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An interesting video on Lead

An interesting video on Lead

I find it staggering that people who want to hunt don't see the value in changing their ammunition from lead to a safer product. We have stopped using lead in petrol, in paint, in our water pipes, but they still want to use lead - ah well, apparently eating it not only kills birds but leads to reduced intelligence in humans......................

NO ONE is asking you to stop legal and genuine hunting, they are just asking you to change your ammunition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHZGQ8i8AwI

HC

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