Saturday 4 February 2012
Its snowing, so the forecast was right for a change, and as the ground is frozen it is settling, although I have to say I doubt we will get four inches. We were wondering why some snowflakes are really small and some are huge, most of these are really small, is it to do with the temperature, or what I wonder.  Adam just flew Cool ground, the snowy owl in the snow which was fun, although it is a little cold to stay out in the flying field for long. 

I had to go to Yorkshire on Thursday, drove up with Anabelle and we went straight to Duncombe Park where we are starting a branch of the ICBP, Charlie was working away doing fencing around the tree protection areas. The planning conditions have come through, I have to say that Charlie is a lot nicer to the planners than I would be, particularly as there are a whole load of conditions that they did not refer to prior to the month late discussion of the planning application. They are insisting on a yearly Bat survey, although they have a letter from the most respected raptor scientist in the world telling them that our birds will not affect the bats, they have been told that we have an increasing populations of bats living on site at the Centre here in Newent although we fly upwards of 40 birds daily, often into the evenings and then do owl evenings as well. They do no bat surveys nor does Natural England on the sites that they own or run, or on our site in the past, but they have asked us to do it, which I have to say considering the letter from Professor Ian Newton which told them that the bats were quite safe, shows how very ignorant they are; in terms of what I have told them about our bat colony here, is sheer stupidity; and taking into consideration that they don’t do surveys themselves is sheer hypocrisy! However Charlie is much nicer than I am and so will probably not tell them this!!

I did a lecture in the evening for the Yorkshire Group of the BFC, what a nice bunch of people and they were really interesting in our starting the Yorkshire branch of ICBP at Duncombe Park. So hopefully they will get involved and be a part of it which would be great. Richard came up to look at the electrics on the site at Duncombe. Its amazing how busy Helmsley is, we had some lunch there and it is literally a 15 minute walk from the middle of the town to where our site is going to be.

We met the guy who hopefully will build the three larger barns for us, so he has gone away to do some paperwork and sums and then that will move onwards, its all exciting stuff. It was bloody cold up there, but not as cold as it was as we drove home. The temperature slowly dropped until as we drove through the gate at home it was -5C. Although we were lucky to get home because the suspension in the Range Rover started to fail on the M42 and we crawled home, I don’t think I have ever spent that long in the slow lane of a motorway!!!

We were held up on the M1 just at the M62 interchange, I thought it was weight of Friday traffic – was it hell, it was because there was an accident on the OTHER carriage way and people were slowing down and gawping. Whoever you were, you are disgusting and despicable! The police despise that sort of behaviour and rightly so, the ambulance and fire people rightly loath it, it causes accidents, it makes people late for appointments, costs thousands of us in an unnecessary queue extra money on fuel, so why do you do it, it’s disgraceful, if you were a vulture you would at least have an excuse, but for a supposedly intelligent creature, there is no excuse.

When I got home and started to catch up on the endless emails I found one from a website who wants me to pay to be on there and they can’t even spell correctly on their damn site!!! You really do wonder sometimes.

Holly looked after the dogs while I was away for the night and the puppy behaved, still don’t have a name that is right for her yet, and this cold weather means she can’t go outside, but she is enchanting when she plays with Sedge who is being very good with her.

Still snowing!!.........................


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

Website counter

Followers