The lovely thing about late summers is the quality of the light, its almost tangiable and you just want to watch it until the last ray has gone. With golden light and the leaves turning early it really has been joyous these last few days. The birds have appreciated it and we had a stunning flight from Hard Tackle on Saturday as he soared up to about 1500 feet. Poor Hemp has had her demonstrations stolen for three days, because with the northerly wind the eagle tended to be out of sight for several minutes (like about ten!) so we fly the Eagle Owl whilst waiting, as she is bigger than he is, but of course as she is flying Hard Tackle rolls up and does something spectacular and she gets ignored! Even yesterday with no eagle, a buzzard came so low to look at her, people's attention wandered. On Hard Tackles Saturday flight he came in with the sun behind him and a wild buzzard stooping at him and then did his amazing roll over at about 400 feet and dropped into the field.

As it turns out it was his last flight for this season as he has pulled a wing muscle, so as I was going to rest him at the end of the week, he has done it himself a little early. He desperately needs to moult anyway. Fortina the Peregrine goes from strength to strength and did her first proper vertical stoop on Sat as well. And then to cap it all we have had two Hobby's playing over the field in full sight for the last three days, although yesterday we did not see them and I suspect they have left for their long journey south. The number of House Martins and Swallows has dropped as well. Although to my delight there were seven Lesser Horse Shoe bats in the coal shed last night and they are starting to come back into my bedroom at night to have a fly round, which is great.

Adam managed to damage his cruciate ligament and so has been limping around for three days now, he is supposed to rest it and a day at the Newent Onion Fair with five birds did help on Sat, although he missed all the great flying much to his annoyance! Holly's Harris Hawk - there is good alliteration for you - is going well and should be flying free today and Adam's has caught up, and my Long-eared Owl did two wing claps yesterday which I have never seen up close before.

The dogs are well although we think that Indigo still misses Arabis as he is less settled at the moment, so we are all giving him plenty of TLC. Sedge continues to grow and amuse everyone although his teeth still resemble a Great White Shark! He gets very excited at the radios and will pick one up and run away growling with it, although of course we make the radio growl back - its a good job the visitors have gone by this time!