I have a bloody cold, there is nothing worse than a summer cold and I feel very coldy! Not pleasant. The puppies are well, they now have their eyes open, they are still in the office with me, but I suspect for not a lot longer. As soon as they can get out of the box, they will move to the place that has been readied for them. I am looking forward to the time when they are playable with. And no, I am not going to keep them all!!! So I am looking for good homes, but I am not giving them away!

 

Breeding season goes on apace. The Snowy Owls have laid, so its only now a few second

clutches and we hope the Hobby's who are late layers in the wild. Helen has built them a splendid nest.

 

Karis has started to go up for the season, he did three superb stoops yesterday, sadly today the weather has not been wonderful, although nowhere near as bad as the weather forecast predicted, so he did not get up much height today.

 

The owl team is coming along. The SIX baby burrowing owls called Team Clouds as we have no idea which one is which, are doing really

well, although it does make for a chaotic demonstration. The Eurasian Eagle Owl Storm, who John has been working with is now huge and about to start serious training. The Asian Brown Wood Owl called Drizzle and being trained by Rhian is a charmer. Haze is the new Barn Owl - Helen's bird, Jimmi is having an Abyssinian Eagle Owl which he has to start taking home soon and it is called Muggy (the weather theme you see), Holly is going to take on the Hawk Owl, that Chris Barnard has given us, that has yet to get a name and Mark and I are going to train a Snowy Owl each - phew!! The Owl evenings this winter are going to be amazing!!

 

The three baby Verreaux's Eagles are doing well with their various parents, and the three baby Grey Buzzard Eagles are growing apace, one is from the usual pair and the other two from my pair up north. I could do with them not fighting each other, but they will grow out of that.

 

The Gardens are looking amazing, we get wonderful comments about them, we have planted some Hosta's down the archway of trees into the flying ground and they look lovely, I hope the snails do not find them.

 

We had to ground Benbecula because of the damn crow, I will have to do something about them nesting in the field early next year, they are so aggressive and Benbecula is a flipping wimp!

 

We have had in a number of injured wild birds, a Sparrowhawk with a fractured Radius, but it did really well as did the Little Owl with the same injury and both recovered enough to be released. We have another Sparrowhawk in now with a worse injury, but Simon has had a go at fixing it, so we will see how it does. We also had in an adult Buzzard but that was too far gone and sadly the injury was very bad, so he is now no longer with us.

 

Delectable has moved to the old King Vulture aviary and Pinotage to her old place, they are both very happy about it. Pinotage is flying really well although the only people who can be down there staff wise are John, Mark and I, all the others get bullied by her!

 

Oh well I am going to go and have a bath and see if that makes me feel better before feeding the chicks.