Sunday 21 July 2013
The weather has been glorious, very hot, and that has made for some very exciting flying, Karis has been up miles, and I end up doing a commentary to a bird that I can't see, I did manage to do it one day with my binoculars, but its hellish difficult to swing a lure at the same time!! It was lovely to actually be able to see him fold and stoop though.
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| Briza and Shasta asleep on the cool weighing room floor! |
Briza has settled in well, its like she has been here for ever and she enjoys riding on the golf cart as well, she has already learnt to scrounge food from the visitors, and she is getting quite brave about going into the pond as well! We clipped Rush and Indigo again, they look a little odd but are SO much cooler in this hot weather.
I think this is the longest period we have had the shade cloth up in the Hawk Walk for years, thanks to Adam and his dad for sorting it out for us, we would have been lost without it this year. But the birds are doing fine. The garden is suffering a little and a couple of the young trees are looking very stressed, we are watering them and I hope they will come back next year. The beech hedge that we moved is not going to manage though I suspect.
The usual ups and down of the Centre and working with birds has occurred, we lost Gluey which was really upsetting to everyone. He was doing really well, jumping to the fist, enjoying life, living with his brother Middle Mouse, and suddenly one day he looked ill and died within a couple of hours. He had had a very tough start to life and it finally was too much for him.
The Striated Caracara's are in disgrace, they hatched a beautiful chick, reared it for about a week and then ate it, so they will not be given the chance to have young again, we will do it for them!
Taransay the Condor has gone to her new home and we miss her very much, she will be back when she is old enough to breed and when I hope we will be able to build some new and larger enclosures for her. We did not want her to leave but for her sake she was getting too wedded to the place here and the people and she needed to move before it became stressful for her to do so. She is such a bright girl that we wanted the best for her.
On a better note, Chris has lent us a simply beautiful Martial Eagle, she is happily sitting in an aviary in the Eagle Barn and will hopefully get a mate here in the future, what a stunning bird. He also dropped off a beautiful captive bred young kite. We have it in with the youngest baby yellow billed kite and they snuggle up together - it is a charming site to see.
The first baby merlin who was ill as a chick is now full grown and very bumptious and Holly has just started to train it, I have started on the first of the Lanners, and Mark has a beautiful Barbary tiercel from Mike Hewlitt, which is doing well and should be flying loose soon. The first three Yellow billed Kites are in training, dubbed 61,62 and 63 until they have their official names they are doing really well.
The Falconry Weekend is approaching fast, I hope the weather holds, it looks like being an excellent event and friends from the US are coming over to help us with running it. I have to go to India soon after the weekend and so it will be good to have lots of help. Bob Dalton has done sterling work on the Facebook page keeping the interest up.
We have been busy and I don't appear to have upset visitors in this hot weather! It is interesting how they all sit on the right hand side of the benches in the shade of the Walnut trees though, you walk down and think that there is no one there as the benches in the front are empty, but they are all in the shade!!
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