Thursday.
The concrete had gone off in the freezer shed so we moved in the new deep freezers, which are very smart, but the problem is that you don’t get half the volume of space with chest freezers that you get with a walk in. However we should save as much as £4.00 per day on the electricity bill and that will pay for most of the freezers with in a year. So you have to be positive about it. (I still want to get back to a walk in though!) Josh came over and so helped with getting everything straight and working in the freezer shed, and it is done and cleaned up outside. By sheer chance a scrap man dropped in, so he took a whole load of scrap metal including the old engines which was cool, so that is all cleared away and looking much smarter.

Adam and John had a great trip to the Netherlands yesterday, I am never sure if it should be called Holland or the Netherlands. I guess looking at Wikipedia it is the Netherlands. Anyway, Vogelpark Avifauna very very kindly gave us their young captive bred Bald Eagle from last year, and Adam and John went to collect it. They had a seamless trip, leaving at 1.00am, catching the Channel Tunnel train, driving to the Netherlands with no problems, seeing round the park, collecting the eagle, driving back and arriving home by 9.30pm!!! We were all amazed. We left the eagle quietly in his box that night and Simon Holly and I got him out this morning and jessed and belled him, and put him out on the lawn. He was sitting on his perch within an hour and seems to be a charming person. He is very good looking. It was grey and rainy today so I did not get a picture, but will try to get one tomorrow.

We were a little low on customers today, not surprisingly with the weather, but got most of the birds flown anyway. The two Luggers are coming on, the male is great and flying free and looking good, the female is behind and has a way to go before she will be loose, but is doing OK. The new falcon that was donated – a hybrid Peregrine Saker is flying free, she is very unfit, but will be exciting once she has gained some fitness, she flies very fast and cuts in on the line – which will teach everyone to keep the lure away from their body!!

Spring is most definitely on its way, as I raked four million seven hundred and forty nine leaves up in the last couple of days, I had to be careful of the daffodils starting to shoot, which was nice to see, and as we dragged various branches of various species of trees to the bonfire you could see the buds were getting close to coming into being again, spring is such a magical time.

I had to pay bills yesterday, not my favourite job I have to say. One bill was for £2.53 for the company that does various collections in our loos. (It always amused me no end that often sanitary ware was sold in public loos by rentokill!! I always thought they poisoned rats!). Anyway I also had a bill for roughly the same amount from BT. I phoned both companies just to check, BT were incredibly helpful (I know, there is a surprise, but credit where credit is due!) and I said can you put the small amount onto my next bill as it will cost me almost that much to write out the cheque and they said of course, which was sensible, did the other company – oh no!! Pratts, that has to be a quick way of losing my business!!

Acer has chewed a big dent in the kitchen table which I was not pleased about, she is more of a chewer than I have ever had before, have to sort that out pronto before Sorrell copies her. And boy can she jump! Which is more than can be said for Sedge who is about as agile as a slug when it comes to jumping!