There is undoubtedly a difference between autumn sun and winter sun. Autumn sun is strong, vibrant and powerful, with deep colour and a feeling that you could cut it with a knife. Winter sunshine is weaker, more transparent and watery and a feeling that it will fade away if you tried to touch it. Today the sunshine, what there was of it was more wintery than autumnal. However it did not stop Casper, the white falcon, who is stunningly beautiful flying loose for the first time! Hooray. I had him on a line to start with and by the time he had flown round me three times, I had the biggest tangle of creance and lure line I have ever seen, I had to ask Adam to come and help me untangle it so I could fly the falcon free!!

Simon would have said that even I could not call it a wind knot, and rightly so! However Casper is now loose and turning. For most of you that will mean nothing, but his first trip loose earlier in the year lasted five days!! And he was picked up in Wales, so this time it was immensley more successful, thank goodness.

The Gymnogene which I am trying to train without taking it out of its aviary came and took four of the revolting hairless mice that we have, out of my gloved fist, so that was good, I knew if I used them he would behave as many of the birds think they are wonderful and eat them like sweets!

Nathan who does all the grass for us and whom we missed at an evening out was asked why he was not there - 'oh' he said, 'I thought it was next week, what a shame I was looking forward to going to the Yew Tree Pub' Unfortunately he not only missed it by a week, but if he had gone to the Yew Tree, we were at the Glasshouse Pub!! We did all laugh at that!

One note of a problem one of the two baby Steppe Eagles was favouring his right leg and so took a trip to Neil Forbes our vet, and he had managed to crack his tibiotarsus, which is very dissapointing, Neil said that if he was going to damage something this was about the best option and he should be fine, did not even need a operation thank goodness. So five weeks rest and he will be back in training. But it is a shame as we waited for a long time before starting them both so they were fully fledged by several months and they should not have had a problem. However its just one of those things I guess. His brother and two sisters are fine and doing well. My one is sitting on the fist now, which is good. All I have to do now is persuade him that going into the weighingroom is quite safe and I do need to be able to get his weight!