Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Yesterday was even more beautiful and even more bitterly cold, the haw frost had increased over night until every blade, every leaf, every tiny twig and all the cobwebs were blanketed in sharp white crystals of frost. We have covered over half the aviaries now with builders plastic sheeting and it is helping. We are still working on the heated perches and they are coming on and we are managing to keep things going. My staff are wonderful as they continue on in the freezing cold and get things done. The food drawers are well over half way in the aviaries, so my target of Christmas looks like being met. They did deviate yesterday because we made two more bird tables, one for outside the shop and one for my courtyard, the small birds are really suffering in this and we all wanted to help. So now there are three feeding tables and several of those plastic feeders. We will be disinfecting all of them once a week as that is really important for the health of the wild bird populations.We had no water in the flat over the shop, or in the clinic to start the day yesterday, so Holly and I managed to thaw it out and get things moving again. We have had no water at the stables since Saturday, and as I was taking buckets down for Henry I must have spilt some, because I realised that after mucking out his stable, my skirt felt stiff - the water had hit my skirt and it was frozen solid!! Interesting!
The place does look lovely, half the frost has gone - it is a balmy -4 today, much warmer than yesterday. The insane thing was that on Saturday night after the Owl Evening, Simon, Adam and I were finishing up and we all said 'isn't is warm, much better!!' and as Simon looked at his temperature gauge, it was three degrees!! That is not exactly warm, but it certainly felt better! We are due for a thaw at the weekend, I hope we have no burst pipes, its a shame that thaws come at the weekends because it is always more expensive for everyone.
Oh I saw a new Andrex advert last night - no real puppy!! What is with that - animated Labrador Puppies - yuck! And as for the Coca Cola advert, one does wonder if any of these large companies have actually got the brains to understand about their carbon footprint. The amount of lights and electricity they show being used in their adverts is criminal and totally irresponsible.I went out for a short trip and bought a Christmas tree yesterday afternoon, completely forgetting that a photographer was coming to take my photo for a portrait in Cotswold Life Magazine, (of course it may have been a mental slip because I loath having my photo taken, I always look god awful). And yes I got a real tree, and yes it is good for the environment, they turn into compost at the end of their time, and while growing they provide an environment for wildlife and produce oxygen, so don't get a fake one, they are very bad for the environment and only produce waste that takes 20 years to break down
- if ever. The background for the photo is beautiful though, our curly hazels covered in haw frost.We had a beautiful juvenile Merlin brought in yesterday, it seemed OK, but quiet, however this morning it was not looking well, and very sadly died, we don't know why as yet. John was here yesterday and today, and so with him and Dick and all the staff minus Robin who is not well, plus Neil and Anabel, we got four of the owl aviaries in the Owl Courtyard re meshed with Zoo
Mesh, they look very good in comparison to the other side. But I was very disappointed to see that the people who make it in the US had patched it in several places. I think that is very very poor, so Hey you Guys, we don't do that sort of thing over here and sell it to people, it is not good enough. We can't do the other side as two of the pairs of owls have laid eggs!! So we start again with the breeding season far too early. Footnote: I had to go onto the birds of prey center website in Awendaw SC yesterday as I could not remember the address and I needed it for some records, it was interesting to see as usual they are using Linda Wrights photos - AGAIN - without permission, when they have been asked more than once not to do so, you would think that by now they would have some decent photos of their own, but I guess not!
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