Friday, 2 April 2010
Rain rain and more rain damn it all. I have to admit to several sleepless nights recently as we are very thin on the ground with visitors, to the point where I am not sure that there isn’t someone at the bottom of the road telling people not to visit! I am hoping it is the miserable weather, and it is pretty miserable, yesterday evening I walked over to the stock room at about 6.30, still daylight and I could see my breath steaming and its flaming April! Still I suppose it could be worse and we could have snow like Scotland and Ireland.I started to dig over one of the flower beds yesterday and Steve walked past with a broken rake. As I needed a far number of shovels, spades, rakes and so on last year, I reckoned that rather than paying Garden Centre prices which are high, I would be buying enough to go to source. Well the stuff I got from Spear and Jackson is appallingly bad. We broke three of the six spades, usually on the first day of use, two of their rakes have now broken, the design of the angle of the handles was obviously done by someone who has never used a tool in his life, so generally I would suggest not buying their stuff unless there is a major improvement – they have a ten year guarantee on the handle of the spades – almost exactly where they broke!!! Perhaps toy tools would be a better description as they certainly are not built to be used in a garden.
My goodness the sky is lightening up and the rain has stopped, well wonders will never cease, I suspect it is a lull! The bird team is pretty much up to strength now and most of them are back flying free, Hare, my beautiful pale Indian Tawny eagle did amazingly considering the weather yesterday.
.JPG)
We have split up the flying of the two Turkey Vultures as the female is great and the male is a lazy bugger! So we are flying him off demo and trying to persuade him that he needs to work a little harder, plus they argue, a little like myself and my brother and sisters did when we were children. Which reminds me, Dinah found an amazing bit of archive film of this place in 1969, Linda has put the link on the website, go and find it and have a look, see who you can recognise!Severn Print have come up with a lovely board that is going on the outside so that people can see what they are going to get if they visit here, and by chance I think it would make a good leaflet too, so I am working on that. The new signs for the aviaries are going up, sponsored by Black Eagle Motorbike Team, for which I am eternally grateful, David and Mark Kay have been amazing in their support of the Centre, and the signs look wonderful. And I know there is a damn spelling mistake, I thought I had corrected it and it bloody well turned up again!! What with the drainage making the paths better, the new enclosure at the end of the Hawk Walk, the new signs, and all the pruning over the winter, the place is looking amazing. Once we can top all the paths it will all come together and look finished, although of course it never is finished!
The baby vulture is doing well, the birds are laying, the spring has to be here soon, all I need is visitors and we will make it through another year. If any of you visit in the near future and can put nice comments on Face book, the International Centre for Birds of Prey has a page and it might encourage more people to come. Here is hoping we have a Happy Easter, don’t eat too much chocolate!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
Happy Easter to you too Jemima and also to the rest of your staff at the centre.
Post a Comment