Friday 2 July 2010
There was a stunning sunset this evening, although I have to admit to being too tired to get up and look at it! It was a lovely day regardless of the brainless weather girl on our local TV who said because there was a spattering of rain, and I mean a spattering, that there was an autumn feel to the morning. She has obviously never been outside, they really do annoy me with their trite and inaccurate comments.

The week has been a tough one, still no sign of Papyrus, which keeps uppermost in most of our minds. I have to suspect at this point that something has happened to him. Things always seem to happen in groups. The young vulture fledged this week and immediately Simon could see that all was not well, we thought he might have broken his leg on fledging and I wish he had as that would have been much easier to cope with. The leg at some point has rotated, and the ligament slipped off the ankle joint, so he could not use it properly. So another trip to Neil Forbes, who did a five hour surgery on him and hopefully the outcome will be good, however poor love can’t stand right now. So as I was very worried about him I pestered Neil yesterday and we decided to make a sling for him to get him off the ground. And so we did, I sacrificed one of the dog beds, and Adam sacrificed one of his climbing bit of equipment (of which he has a lot!). We decided that as we would have to keep a very weather eye on him, we would ‘hang him up’ as it were, in the closest compartment to the weighing room where there is the most going on and the most people moving around to watch him. It took five of us over an hour to do it, and he was stunningly well behaved all through. Of course he is also right in front of the visitors, so people are feeling very sorry for him. Damn it, I am feeling very sorry for him, but he seems settled. Someone sat with him until after 11.00pm last night, and then three of us got up at regular intervals through the night to check him. In fact it turned out that we had all missed one another by about half an hour, so tonight it will be shifts, mine is the 2.00am one! He is eating, he seems calm, he has a fan on in the heat and an umbrella for shade, lots of company and we will take him out every few days, and re do the sling. If anyone has any better ideas for supporting him – shout please. He has to have the iron work for three and a half weeks and then we hope he will be able to walk again.

The boiler man came and serviced all three boilers and warned me that I should start saving for a new boiler in the house damn it, I could have done without that. There goes the horse! Nettle and Sedge seem much better and the dogs stole the show again today with more bulrushes, and my lovely customers all sent me some super pictures, which I will put here. Cremorne (Bald Eagle) is flying really well, but bating a lot on the way back to the Hawk Walk so we need to spend some time with her, but it is too warm to do at the moment as she gets very over heated. D’Arcy Spice got caught by the wind yesterday and was about 15 feet up in the air, with a look of horror on his face!! But he managed a very professional landing.

I completely forgot it was Friday today and should have collected the Landrover that I am borrowing again, so I have to go and get it at 7.30am tomorrow as I am doing a flying demonstration for the Hawk and Owl Trust, so tomorrow is another busy day! Oh and an old friend of mine, sent me a lovely picture of some baby kestrels in a tree in his garden which he said I could share with you.

1 comments:

Gaina said...

Hello Jemima :)

I was at Acton Court today and thoroughly enjoyed your flying display. I got a half decent photograph of Darcy Spice too, which is up in my blog now. If you'd like me to send the photograph to you by email I will try my best to clone or crop the stray knee out of the frame.

I hope the vulture makes a fully recovery soon :).

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.

Blog Archive

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

Website counter

Followers