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.

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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