Sunday, 28 November 2010
Sunday night - It is cold, very cold, in fact it would be fair to say that it is extremely cold! My knees are not quite at the stage where they are raw, but getting that way. And I know I should cover them but I only really like wearing a skirt. I will have to do something however if it is going to stay like this for long.The Incubation Workshop is over, the participants worked very hard and I hope had a good time as well as learning a great deal, I was rushing around with Mark to make sure that the rest of the stuff here at the Centre got done. Simon rushed around making sure that the birds were fed, we were OK and the workshop had a seemingly endless supply of incubated eggs to study and take apart.
Paul had put in a new Swedish heater, it eats pellets of sawdust and it is staggeringly efficient. It was not working on Wednesday, but fired up on Thursday and kept the Education Room toasty warm. We used it yesterday for the Half Day because it never got above freezing at any point, so they did the handling inside, which made it much more pleasant.
We have grounded Gypsy King as he is not dealing with the cold well and I don't want to push him. We are having to keep a really vigilant eye on the smaller birds such as Katana (barn owl) and Eager (Long-eared Owl) because they are losing weight very fast in this cold. We have also had in two injured birds with another one due in tomorrow. Dusky Emperor seems to love the weather though and she is flying superbly, which is great. The falcons are coping and all are inside almost all the time now. Richard is looking at the heated perching again, we sort of got caught on the hop with this very early cold snap.
Most of my guests leave tomorrow, some are gone and Susie and Pat are being driven to Gatwick by Adam, leaving at 6.00 am tomorrow, with Jon leaving the following day. We have two days left of this month and then we close although the experience days and owl evenings continue until Christmas.Jan is off to New York for a short trip, she is going to see my sister Dinah and have lunch so she will miss our first closed day breakfast!! Anabel is still with us and working hard, she was very helpful when Holly, John and Adam were doing the course and has been painting the new feed drawer - ad nauseam!
I went over to ride Dante last Monday, it was interesting!! He is not yet ready to come home, and I think he may be a little too keen for me, he is blissfully comfortable to ride, but he has so much potential and I don't think I am going to give him what he needs which is lots of work and lots of jumping. We will see. I miss Henry, but have been very glad not to have to worry about him in this last hectic week.
The two Owl Evenings just gone went very well, lovely guests, and although very cold, the birds flew brilliantly and looked wonderful.
Its been so weird to see a sprinkling of snow with autumn leaves falling on top of it. We are supposedly due to have more snow this coming week, but I could do with it waiting until after the 18th really. Oh well I guess it is winter after all said and done!
Monday morning - talk about frustrated. I got up early to see off my american friends, and then walked the dogs around the field in the dark. I heard water running, which with the amount of frost we are having I should not have heard.
So I put the dogs back inside and walked up the road first to see if it was anything to do with my water supply, then I walked down the road to check. On the road at the end of my field I could hear the water and as I neared the corner, I was slipping all over the place on the ice. So I located the leak, which has to be a water main as it is gushing out and walked or rather slipped home to report it. Ah you might say, how very responsible of you! Well yes, but you try doing it! At before 7.00am there is no one to report to. Now Severn Trent Water Board do have an emergency number, or it is laughingly called that, however first of all you have to hear how to thaw out your own pipes and a whole load of other non emergency information before they give you yet another emergency number, which has the same bloody answer phone message, and then finally puts you through to a number which is not answered - well done Severn Trent, first class emergency service.So then I looked up Local Police online, well that was about as flaming useful as the damn water board! I got a list of phone numbers of police stations that were all closed, and eventually I dialed 999, which is not something I wanted to do, however it is dangerous down there and there is going to be an accident unless there are some warnings put out. Well! The bloody woman who answered needs shooting that is for sure, she put me through to the police, which is what I needed I guess and one can only hope that they will do something about it before there is an accident. One does wonder why the emergency services complain about too many 999 calls when they don't give you any numbers that you can call something like this in 24/7. I seem to remember that at least one local police station was manned 24 hours a day, I guess that does not happen now.
One thing is for sure, my new bottom pond will be full for the first time - pretty damn soon!!
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