Well it was not the most rivetingly exciting weekend weather wise, but it did not rain, however I don’t think we saw the sun for more than about two minutes on Saturday evening! But it was lovely to see reasonable numbers of customers again and the dogs were delighted to have people around. Sedge thinks that all children want to play with him which is not always the case.

I scraped the droppings (lots of them) from all the tiny owls yesterday, and spent most of this morning scrapping Egyptian Vulture, Caracara, Gymnogene and Eurasian Eagle Owl droppings off the walls of their enclosures and a couple of times scraping the Egyptian Vulture and the Caracara off me! We changed a couple of perches and they look neater and tidier. Actually I have come to the conclusion that life would be a great deal easier and cheaper if all the birds were stuffed. If we put motors into about half so they moved on occasion most people probably would not even notice! I remember getting numerous phone calls about an eagle owl sitting on the roof of a shop in Newent, people could hear it hoot, see the jesses, hear the bell and watch it moving all of which was remarkably clever as the damn thing was plastic and nothing whatsoever to do with us, it did not to a great deal of moving either! It would not be as much fun though and I don't suppose we would learn much either.

Simon and Adam cleared up all the tree branches and whathaveyou from Dave’s chain sawing on Friday, they left it all by the fire and this morning Adam started it, as it was mostly Leylandii and Juniper it went up remarkably well, in fact at one point Holly and I thought it was snowing in the Hawk Walk!! John, Zoe and Joe came today and finished off all the clearing, it really does look so nice by Barn Two that we are going to have our spring clean in there this week. As Simon is going to take Athena’s eggs tomorrow it is the ideal time to clean that barn. So anyone out there – that is our task this week!!!

We flew all the birds, and they all did well, some of the young Lanners are really going to be very good in time. The male Lugger is coming on very nicely and showing signs of being a very good flyer. The female flew loose for the first time today, it was an interesting experience!! Time will tell with her.

My Range Rover is back, I have not had time to drive it yet, so again – time will tell, I really hope it is fixed this time as I don’t have a lot of faith left in it at the moment. The young Bald Eagle fed today, eating beef and chicks by its perch, so we are moving on with him, it is going to take time though.
Bob Davies, Julie’s dad came over on Saturday and he and Mike fixed the digger, so its on with the drainage next week, I bloody hope it does not snow again, that would really annoy me! It is however supposed to get very cold again damn it. It is hard on the birds and us out all day. Roll on the spring proper. At least we can’t complain that we have not had a proper winter, it has been more than proper enough for me!