Friday, 23 July 2010
Where has a week gone, damned if I know, I go to bed on Monday night and the next thing I know it is Friday morning!! It will probably be Christmas in about three days at this rate. Its been a busy week, plenty of visitors, which is nice, and some of them have been great, only one whining child which is also great. Holly’s Harris Hawk is a sweety and already flying free. The young owls are all coming on nicely and D’Arcy Spice is now flying the full length of the flying ground when he is bothering to be looking in the right direction and not being fascinated by a tree, car, butterfly, swallow, leaf or invisible whatever! He has also killed the toy mouse which we use for a blackboard rubber in the weighing room. Holly's young Ural owl is called Bramley and as you can see is charmingThe young vulture is going to have to go into an aviary as from NOW, he has been pretty good and stayed on the lawns, with the very occasional foray onto the path, however today he thought he might try the shop!!
And as I don’t want him to bite a customer he is confined to barracks and we are having a move round and he is going into an aviary for his own sake, and ours!!Sadly the Golden Eagles have had to go back to their owner, they did fine with him, but did not do well here, we had to split them apart as the male was being vile to the female. I hope they return to being nice to one another when they are back in their old enclosure.
Talking of Golden Eagles, the only one we have for the moment now is the Very Golden Eagle, who now sits on his new plinth loo
king huge and very impressive, it was a job to get him there and many thanks to Sarah and Mark for the loan of the tractor to lift it up there, but the result is wonderful. Now all I need to know is could we remove all the gold leaf and paint and is it bronze underneath!!My goshawk is slowly coming on, he is a little more temperamental than I had hoped, but he is getting there, certainly kills the dummy rabbit with glee. We had a young wild goshawk in too, he has hit something and has a slight head injury, but should go back to the wild very soon. Unlike the young Sparrowhawk, that was found in the road, it was far to young to have flown there itself, so we can only guess that it was dropped by something, perhaps a crow, having stolen it from its nest. It has no balance, and has not improved since it came here, so the prognosis is not great, which is a great shame.
It seems weird to not be at the CLA Game Fair today, but I hope to get back there again next year, and its nice to be here working on the new birds, which is important at this time of their training.The day ended today with rather more drama than anticipated or needed when Alexandria (African Peregrine) flew at full tilt into the side window of the Pavilion in the flying ground. The building has been there about 15 years and never has a bird hit it, however today that changed and we will put strips of tape onto the glass so that the reflection does not confuse the birds. She was laid out on the floor - just what you need with an audience, I picked her up and took her straight to the hospital area, where we put her in a hospital box, she was looking groggy and I remembered that the problem that you have with a head trauma is swelling of the brain, so I phoned Neil, who always has an answer for me, and we put her on 0.05 of a mil of Metacam and some fluids, the Metacam is a non steroidal anti inflammatory and should do the trick for any swelling. She is now back in her compartment and eating and looking OK, although I suspect has a headache. Here is hoping that she is herself again in the morning, although we will give her a few days off to fully recover. Let us hope that tomorrow is slightly less exciting.
Footnote; I don't know why this blogger programme puts a preview button on their programme because it is a complete waste of time, it does not tell you what you have done is going to look like by any stretch of the imagination - sort it out Blogger
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
excuse me jemima (this might be the wrong place to put a question ) i came to the icbp in june and you made your kestrel hover with the lure, i was wondering if you could give instructions for how you do it. even though i dont own a kestrel but i might be getting one. ( i currently have a harris hawk and my grandad has a saker falcon)
oh and another thing i have watched your dvd understanding falconry billions of times, i find it very interesting and i never get tired of watching it!!!( i dont know if you remember it but when i came to the icbp i came up and said to you that i enjoyed your dvd and you said good it would of been a shame if you hadnt)
yours faithfully
craig williams aged 11
Post a Comment