Thursday, 16 January 2014
I am sure that
at times our visitors and my friends think that I am anti humans, and generally
they are probably right. It just staggers me how stupid, basic and all round
unpleasant they can be. I have just been ploughing through EU paperwork and
legislation and that in itself is a guaranteed place to get very angry at how
stupid some of the laws are that are coming out, you would hope they might have
better things to do. After all who cares what shape a bloody banana is. I
suspect that at some point in the future when there are world-wide food
shortages, which is likely to happen, all
of us will just be pleased to get a banana and all that stupid
legislation (26000 words on selling cauliflowers!) will go by the board, and rightly
so.
And then there
are those people who want licenses to shoot Rhino’s, Hippo’s (where the hell is
the skill in that for God’s sake) Elephants, Polar Bears, or go to South
America and shoot 4000 doves in three days, or two puma’s. Why do these
complete morons want to do it, what vicarious gratification does it give them
to sit there with their expensive high powered rifle and a beautiful graceful,
superb animal that looked so much better alive than held up by these pathetic
idiots. Plus with almost all of these animals they don’t even have the
extremely minor excuse of wanting to kill to eat. You do have to wonder at how their minds
work, if indeed they have anything that could be called one.
On the
other-side there are stunning buildings, amazing artwork, generous and kind
acts, and genuinely lovely people who stand up for humanity and bring it to a
level where one could be proud to be human if it were not for all the others.
Sadly the
others, extremists in religion – what is it with people who set off suicide
bombs and kill hundreds of people who have no interest in their problems - are they really stupid enough to think that
it will have the desired effect – I guess they are and the only upside is that
there is one less of them around, and all the other idiots push aside the good
that so many do.
OK rant over. We
have redone the roof over the aviaries for the trained owls and the weighing
room, and found out where the leaks were and fixed them, which is a relief. We
are half way through the replacement roof on the tiny owls and Delectable. We
were gaily taking the old and extremely rotten one off (it had been on since
1995!) when I suddenly realised that the apex of the roof was in fact not over
the service passage, but over the aviaries of birds that we had not moved! So a
quick removal of birds occurred and the roof was finished on one side in the
pouring rain and dark enough that it was hard to see the damn nail to hit it!
Delectable is ensconced in the indoor Hawk Walk having a wonderful time. The
others are all either in spare aviaries or in the hospital in the nice
comfortable, clean spanking new boxes for the night.
Deneb looks stunning, a beautiful orange
pink breast colour and very smart on the back. We have also got out Oberon,
John’s Red tailed Buzzard, and Tiapan, the Barbary Falcon as well as Common and
Discovery – Lanners, with more to come out over the next week ready for opening
again in February. Benbecula is flying brilliantly as is Rathlin, and Mark is
going to get his young Grey Buzzard Eagle out soon as well, so we should have a
great team to start the year.
We have had two very sad losses over the
winter, Pioneer our first and beautiful Steller’s Sea Eagle was found dead in
her moulting aviary, we do not as yet know why, she was fat, in wonderful
condition, just changing to full adult plumage, but died below her perch. We
will miss her greatly. We also lost one of the older Black Kites, Milan, she was
12 years old, which is not a great age.
Otherwise the birds are doing well. We gave
up with the African Fish Eagles who have been trying to build their damn nest
on a perch, a rock in their aviary, even the food draw – in fact anywhere other
than their nest ledge. So we gave them a new one near their favourite perch and
they love it. We now have CCTV in all the Eagle Barn Aviaries and so we can
check on them 24 hours a day to see what they are doing, it is wonderful and thank
you Adam for fixing it up.
We did some filming with Suliska earlier this month, he had to show that a Great Grey Owl can find food without seeing it, so he was pouncing on a buzzer hidden in leaves. The Burrowing Owls may star later in a wildlife film and my sparrow hawk is wanted to film with as well, although I am less confident in him than the others.
Rob is making the garden look great, or as great as he can in the incessant rain which is beginning to get us all down.
The snowdrops are coming out, because it is so mild we are hearing spring bird song, so I guess it will probably freeze and snow once we open again!!
The India trip is postponed until mid
February, so I can do the two lectures that I have booked. Angela has painted
the café again, so we are getting ready for February 1st!!
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1 comments:
I love reading these blogs. It's fantastic to be able to keep up witht the goings on at the centre, and your rants are very entertaining (and invariably true).
I'm sorry to hear about Pioneer. She was such a beutiful, majestic bird. I'm really looking forard to seeing Oberon when you re-open. I sponsored him/her last year, but only saw him fly a couple of times and didn't manage to get more then a couple of nice photos of him in flight.
The portait of suliska above is absolutely stunning. I love the great grey owls. The bright eyes and circular markings on the facial disk give them such hypnotic faces.
Alan.
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