Saturday, 19 July 2014
Well I have to say its been a shitty week. The weather was lovely until last night when we had a mother of a thunderstorm and very heavy rain, which I was out in as there was a power cut and the drains were blocking. However the gardens did need it, this will have given them a much needed drink. At the end of last week our Great Grey Owl from the Owl Courtyard, one of the breeding pair, except that they have never bred, got ill. We took it to Vets Now, but sadly she died two days later. Then a good friend of mine gave me a ten day old male Sparrow H
awk chick, who died 36 hours later. I am confident that it was nothing that we did, I do not know why it happened sadly. Then Nijinsky our elderly and much loved Kestrel suddenly became ill and as he was rapidly losing weight and not responding to treatment we decided not to try and keep him going when it obviously was not fair on him so he was euthanized. Then the oldest male baby Snowy Owl decided to die, he had been doing well, but had enteritis that did not show until he was dead. Then to cap it all my beautiful baby Tawny Eagle suddenly got the same symptoms as the other Tawny Eagles had, just when we thought we were past the danger point, and so I had to have him euthanized as well. So a really shitty week all in all.
However the puppies have now all gone and so the two I am keeping - Agapanthus who is a boy and twice the size of Nightshade who is a girl. They are very happy and pleased to be in the house and have settled well all things considered. Sedge is not being too mean to them and I have not had to rush downstairs in the middle of the night to a screaming puppy as yet! It is a relief to have the others gone and I know they are all in great homes, so I don't have to worry about them. I hope their new owners are having as much fun with them as we are. Mine love the fan in the weighing room, because it has been so warm they have been lying in front of, when they are not trying to dig all the water out of the various water bowls around the place!
We have started training this years young Lanners or at least some of them, we are keeping and training five as we are a little short on flyers this year. I am training and female as is Helen and Jimmi is training a male, the other two are second clutch birds and so not quite ready, so Holly and Mark will train those. I am also training the only Merlin that we bred, who is jumping to the fist nicely however we can't work out what sex it is! Its definitely either male or female.
Holly and I did a flying demonstration on Thursday in Quedgeley, which is near the river on the outskirts of Gloucester and it is always a difficult place to fly because of the damn gulls. We must have had 400 of the things flying over us when we started. They chased the falcons and hated the eagle but otherwise ignored the kites and Harris Hawk. The birds were amazing although you could see they were a little concerned about the gulls. So was I!
My sister Dinah and brother Nick are here now, both arrived yesterday, so they saw a short period of sunny weather and now it is raining again as I write bugger it.
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