Sunday, 30 June 2013
Well I did go and buy one!! Briza (which is
the scientific name for quaking grass which is my favourite grass of all time)
came and joined us last Saturday. She is twelve weeks old, which is older than
I like and I was a little worried, but I should not have been she has settled
in like she has been here for ever. I had wondered that with a new Lab, maybe,
just maybe Shasta would not be bottom of the pile, wrong she still is! But she
and Briza are playing together which is really nice to see.
Gluey is doing really well although now
nicknamed One Jump Gluey, as that is all he will do for food!! However he is a
different bird now and living with his younger but larger brother Middle Mouse
and doing very well. Middle Mouse just had his TV debut on Newsround, and
hopefully people will rush here to see him!
Not all has gone really well with the breeding,
it is the usual roller coaster ride. We have all crossable things crossed
because the Striated Caracara’s has just hatched a baby, so we are hoping that
they will hatch the other one as well and rear both. They are such clever birds
that we don’t want to interfere and we certainly don’t want to hand rear them.
Sadly we had a great deal less luck with the second clutch of merlins, they got
some infection, which literally killed three of them in about 12 hours, we
managed to save the oldest and largest chick, and it is still on antibiotics,
but it was a grave disappointment to lose three out of the four.
On the up side Taransay (baby Condor) is
now getting huge!!! And she is starting to very dramatic jumps up in the air,
with those great big furry wings she looks enchanting when she does it and the
visitors love her.
We have had lovely visitors most of the
time however we have had one who has complained and been a pratt on Trip
Advisor. The first moan was that we don’t have hot water in the loos and he
stated that was illegal – wrong chum, and let me tell you that the day some of my
customers stop shoving tampax and sanitary towels and the hand towels down the
loo, stop using enough lavatory paper for an elephant with diarrhea, learn to
aim properly at the urinal (you would think they could do that wouldn’t you!)
and turn off the taps and not leave them running, then and only then will I
consider, and it will be consider, putting in hot water. Plus as a conservation
centre we don’t believe in wasting either water or power, or my income. Then he
complained that the baby changing facility was utterly basic, you are dead
right mate, it is not only basic but it’s extremely old as well – am I going to
put in one of those expensive pull down things that you see in some loos – that
would be a resounding no!! Do you have one at home, I don’t think so. I don’t
actually see why I should provide anything, it’s your choice to have children,
learn to deal with them without expecting other people to fork out for them!! Then
he wanted us to offer sponsorship of eagles for £10 and a goody bag!!! What an
idiot ( not my first choice of words!) I wish people like this would have the
balls to a) put their real name on
complaints, and b) have the guts to complain to me personally, except that they
rarely do as usually they are afraid of me.
I managed to hurt my back this week, it has
been going on nicely, but I stupidly picked up a tractor battery and moved it
after spraying the car-park on Wednesday and I have done something that is
pretty painful, so I am back on the drugs, which make me feel very light
headed, but do mostly work. However the new Golf Cart is great and not only helps on the feed round (the dogs love it) but also means we can spray weeds without having the back pack on, which is heavy and slow.
My neighbour Mark has just topped the
overflow car park and the small fields, they look great now. David lent me
Robin and he trimmed all the hedges, Peter Dowle has two of his staff coming in
one day a week to fight with the weeds in the flower beds and the gardens are
starting to look lovely. I am so lucky. And next week I am going to tackle the
rest of the spraying and getting the front of the house back to how it should
be. I have a tricky week this week when I am away for most of it which means I get
nothing done here which is frustrating and no doubt I will have a huge pile of
emails to deal with when I get back.
We have six baby Snowy Owls that we are
rearing and the parents have one of their own to look after. Mark wants to train up a female, so I hope we get the choice right! We have just taken
the now full grown Bald Eagle away from its foster parents, and very soon we
will move the baby Lanners out into an aviary away from adults so they can grow
up a little before we start to train them. The kites are doing very well and
the one baby from the second clutch has joined the first three and is doing fine.
It’s nearly July – where does the time go
and I have to get down to tidying up the website and the Falconry Weekend one
as well, I just don’t have enough hours in the day.
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