And STILL glorious weather!! Hectic month all in all. Easter was amazing, we had a bit of a wet day on Easter Friday, but still people came, other than that we have had no rain worth talking about and sunshine to bring people out. Certainly the best Easter since I got back in 2009 thank goodness. And it is just lovely how many people will pay that little bit extra and let us have gift aid, it makes a huge difference.

The place is looking lovely, the daffodils are nearly over although my second favourites (the wild ones are my first favourites) which are some incredibly sweet smelling narcissus and are always last. If I put some in a vase they scent the whole room which is wonderful.

The funniest thing about Easter was the baby rabbits in the Burrowing Owl mounds in the flying ground. We think there are five of them and they keep popping up their heads during the flying. Why we have not caught one I will never know. As soon as they are large enough I am afraid they are going to be evicted!

The three baby Stellers are back with various eagles being reared, sadly none of the Verreaux's Eagles eggs were fertile this year, we have no idea why. The Brahminy Kites finally settled and we have two babies, one back with mum and dad and the other going back on Sunday. We are keeping them both as the pair are over 17 years old, so we want a young pair to come on and there is a chap on the continent who is breeding them so we will exchange one. The Mountain Caracara's finally laid eggs that Holly managed to get before they ate them, however they are so dark that we can't see through them in candling, so we have no idea yet if they are fertile. We put a dummy egg with them, one that they could not eat! But they threw it out! Oh and the Barbary Falcons have four eggs that are fertile.

We are rearing a new Great Horned Owl for the experience days and another Ural Owl as well. He or she was not a planned child, so he or she is a bonus bird! The theme for names this year is British village names, there will be a number that I will have to ban!

The newly laid hedge is greening up and looking wonderful. We have planted some new hedging plants in the gaps. The bloody dogs however are finding a number of places in the various fences where they are getting out, so we are going to re-fence 50% of the place with four foot mesh, I hope that will do the trick as it is very stressful worrying about them.

Karis is back on duty and flying like a dream as is Fortina. My merlin Windward is now in for moulting, she was flying brilliantly before we fed her up, but I want her to moult out before the end of august so I can fly her at the Falconry Weekend. My Hobby is now out - she is very weird, I have no idea what is going on in her mind when I fly her, but she could end up being very good, if she remembers that she is doing a demonstration, which half the time I think she forgets!

The wind was in the east today and all the birds loved it. Benbecula (Stellers) was brilliant and so was Stratosphere (grey buzzard eagle), he is a dream to watch fly. I am hoping he will behave on Sunday as it is my first show of the season, not that I am doing many this year, and he is going to take over from Hare who is going to have a summer off so he can have a really good moult. I miss flying him though. I am at Andoversford at the Cotswold Country Fair, flying early before the pony racing starts.

The centre van is not well, the gear box is going and something else as well - a brush thing. My
philosophy with cars is to turn up the radio so weird noises can't be heard, but Adam can spot a problem in a heartbeat. Not sure what we are going to do about it, I don't think it is worth a great deal that is for sure.

Oh and some really good news on Sedge. I got an email today from Gill -