Monday 7 February 2011
Gosh I do miss Nettle; I suppose because she slept on my bed our relationship was that bit more important , plus she was the oldest here, I would happily give her the whole damn bed to have her back. One of the others will be pleased to take her place, but as I have to go to India next Sunday and will be away for ten days, I will wait until I get back before offering one of them. Technically it should be Indigo as he is the oldest now by about ½ an hour, but Rush would not be happy, and if they both come that leaves just Sorrel and Sedge in the kitchen and I suspect Sorrel will be vociferous about that. We will have to see. This is a picture that Gary sent me from Japan - a young Nettle!

It has been much milder over the last few days, and we have by good luck missed almost all of the rain that has dumped on others, probably because the rain clouds are racing past too fast. We have had one hell of a wind for days now, too much to fly many of the birds and so over half of the demonstrations have been indoors, when we tried Cool Ground outside, he flew into the hedge!

Finally the sun came out today, but I chickened out of going riding this morning, the wind was actually quite scary at the top of the hill. Poor Henry managed to get a nail in his foot on Saturday, he is particularly accident prone, he was good as gold when we pulled it out, but he is a little sore. Georgia is going to ride Dante tomorrow; she jumped him yesterday and said he was very good!

The birds are doing well, much to our delight Lammerlaw, the African Fish Eagle laid her first egg, which was a lovely surprise, especially as the year before last she seriously tried to kill Faraday her husband. We were trying to decide what the technical name for murdering your husband was, not Patricide, or siblicide, so Holly suggested Pesticide, which a number of us thought was highly suitable for husband murder!! We don’t expect it to be fertile, but it’s a good start and she is sitting. We have Tawny Eagle eggs, and the female Saker Sage is chasing Mosquito around, so we are hoping that he will think she is the best thing since sliced bread. It does not look like the Griffon Vultures are going to bred this year, but the Steller’s are looking good and the Verreaux’s are mating.

The two ponds are looking great and the ground is drying out so I am hoping that Mark Davies will be able to roll it soon as that will make a big difference. The daffodils are starting to show and the crocuses, we have lost some plants though, some of my Hebe’s do not look well and the Choisya I suspect may not come back, the one by my house looks very dead indeed.

The young Steller’s is coming on well, she looks magnificent on the concrete block in the Hawk Walk and even lies down on her shelf perch, although she swamps it!!She looks huge in the weighing room too 5600 grams!

We finally managed to get a number of the birds flown this afternoon as the wind dropped and this evening the sun was out, the sky clear, the light was lost later, the days are slowly getting longer and the sunset was just beautiful. Now there is a good moon and the night smells like frost.

0 comments:

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.

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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