Visiting us on Thursday was generally not a pleasant experience, not because of us I hasten to add, the day went well with the birds and all flew well, we even got out both of the merlin's due to start now, I am looking forward to training mine, however the whole place absolutely stank! The farmer who rents the land to the east and south of us kindly decided that as the wind was coming towards us from his land it would be a great day to spread chicken shit all over the fields. I might point out that I had expressly asked him to wait until there was an easterly wind, but no, he chose the worst day possible in terms of the wind direction. So from about 9.30am until the end of the day we had tractors going round spraying the bloody stuff to within feet of the aviaries and the café. The smell was dire, enough to make you actually want to throw up, the visitors were amazingly patient about it, but no one could eat outside, although the weather was warm, and all the cars in the car park were covered in the stuff by the end of the day. I was and still am pretty pissed off about it, I do not think it was a kind or neighbourly thing to do.

I then had great fun the following morning, I have been trying to indd out where I tell what used to sensibly be called the Ministry of Agriculture, and used to employ vets, and is now called AHVLA which happens to be the same bunch that deal with CITES - that I am importing a male King Vulture for the King Vulture EEP so that we might breed some. I gather that I have to inform the relevant authorities that I am bringing the bird in from a zoo in France.

So logically you would think I would phone AHVLA in Gloucester, so I did, and they said, no you need to phone Chelmsford where things are centralised. Chelmsford said No, you need to phone your local area, which now things have been centralised is Exeter (really close to here!!), third phone call Exeter who said, (Guess what!) No; that now that things have been centralised you have to phone Carlisle (so now I have been round the bloody country). Was it the right place – no, that is centralised for Export not imports, however Carlisle were helpful, they said that they were the wrong place ( there is a surprise), but they would phone round for us and let us know who to phone. And guess what, we have to phone the local people in Gloucester.

The smell of chicken dung is slowly seeping away and we have our last summer barbeque and Owl evening this evening, then the next thing is the Falconry Event on the first weekend in September and we have just organised three Golden Eagles to come and be here for the weekend. And here is a picture of Mollie, my new horse, not with me on board I hasten to add - well not yet, but soon!

Quote for the weekend E.O. Wilson Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the "environmentalist" view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.