It’s was lovely day yesterday, although the forecast as usual was wrong very wrong damn them. They said rain, so I sowed grass seed yesterday morning and did not spray weeds, and in fact I should have done it the other way round!!

I collected the ‘eyes’ for our Owl Maze on Monday and a stone that had been specially carved by Rob from Royal Forest Pennant Stone. Thanks to him and Nick Horton, who gave them to us, and my goodness if you want quality carved stone, that is the place to go.

I was lucky enough to be shown an Apple Tree that is going outside Hereford Cathedral, and it is absolutely stunning, worth going to Hereford just to see it once it is in place, even if getting through Hereford is a nightmare! So the maze is complete and looks wonderful. Children seem to like the new adventure trail by the flying ground, and the one that Adam and Mark and various wonderful volunteers are doing in the wood is going to be very exciting, not for smaller children though!

The birds are flying well, the Steller’s was superb, needless to say on the day I was not here! But in a wind she is definitely getting the idea, not so good on a still day but that is not surprising. The Great Grey Owl is doing well, will be on demonstration soon and the baby Abyssinian Eagle Owl is one of the charming owls I have yet to meet. Holly’s little White-faced Scops Owl, (thanks to Mick) is also very sweet and I have a new baby Burrowing Owl who is just a scrap of a thing at the moment. Very soon the Lanners will be able to come out, and the young Harris Hawks are fledged and flying around in the aviary.

The two people who came on the photography day have put some lovely comments on our Facebook Page, they apparently had a wonderful day despite the rain, and there is a great video of Sedge running in the Lurcher Race and the Falconers Fair in May which is on there as well. Holly has put up some new pictures. Sadly we did not have enough people wanting to come to the first summer barbeque, so I hope you will book in for the July one, it should be fun, and Richard Will have finished the lights by then!

The grass in the bottom field is finally growing, although needs spraying for non grass weeds very soon and the top field is almost all buttercups, which are going to cop it very soon too. The pond is fractionally fuller than it was although I think it is going to take some major rain to fill it up again. Life got rather interesting on Thursday for the 2.00 pm demonstration, we have had a swarm of bees trying to take residence in the roof of my house, and they are seriously upsetting the House Martins, which I am not pleased about. However as we started the second demonstration, either them or another swarm came buzzing down to the flying ground, we had done two birds and decided to take Ruby into the indoor Hawk Walk and wait and see what happened outside. Well a huge swarm took up home in one of the Walnut trees just behind the seats in the flying ground. We did fly the Steller's but had the audience sitting on the play area! Sue phoned a friend who is into bees and two of them came, we used Richard's big hedge stepladder - thanks Richard, and they climbed up, pruned back some of the branches and then one of them held a tiny - well it looked bloody small to us (!) - basket out and Adam and the other chap shook the branch with a rope, and blow me they

dropped into the basket - did it have a top - nope! Then it was brought down out of the tree and gently placed open end down onto a sheet and the bees all either stayed in there, or climbed around and then went it, they did about three other shakes into one of our buckets and after about a couple of hours, off they went with the sheet wrapped round the hive thing - in the back of their car!! Amazing!

The heavy rain promised for Friday never came here, my tractor arrived, but with the wrong mower, so that is coming on Tuesday, with a five foot cut that should save Nathan a lot of time once he gets the hang of it. Richard HH has been working on designs for a potential new shop and cafe, something that we desperately need, we spend hours yesterday on it and I know he spend even more time previously, I envy the programme he is using, but it looks hard to learn.