First Owl Evening this evening, with a slightly different format, so hopefully it will go very well and we have two extra owls on the flying. Poor Helen had to take my African Goshawk to the vet this evening. She had been sick this morning and then would not keep down her meds, so we don't hesitate here, no waiting to see what happens, she is too important to take any risks, so hopefully we will have caught whatever it is in time and she will be fine. I do hope so because she is perfectly wonderful and I had hoped to fly her loose today for the first time.

We did all our interviews for the new job yesterday and the day before. The quality of the interviewee's was excellent, and made us all wish we had four jobs available instead of only one. The enthusiasm from most of them was lovely to see. We have five coming back for a work day next tuesday and then the awful job of choosing one and telling the other no, which is not fun.


The weather has been a little depressing over the last week and in fact we finally saw the sun for the first time in seven days at lunchtime today, although not for long. It was very wet this morning and windy so we have fielded phone calls all day saying - yes the owl evening is going ahead. In fact we have never cancelled one yet. We have had to switch things round a bit, on occasion, usually because of wind or rain, one, I think in 2000 we had snow on the last evening and everyone was keen to get home before it became any deeper. That was the year our nutty friends drove all the way from Norfolk to see an owl evening and I did them a special guided tour at the end of the evening because they were so late!

I am off to India and Nepal on Monday week for the SAVE meeting and I am praying that we are not flying over any dangerous countries, flying gets more hazardous as time goes on and I don't even like flying on the best of days. I have always thought that it would be far more sense to give us all parachutes rather than those bloody life rafts. I will be very relieved to get back safely, and hope not to travel abroad for a while after that.

The Black Shouldered Kite that we have is jumping well to the fist and is very pretty, I hope to get her or him flying free before I leave. We also have a new young African Fish Eagle who is charming, although a little nervous of us, we are taking our time with him so he settles well before asking him to do anything in the way of flying. Then early next year I start on the new Bald Eagle, and it would be great to get them both fishing out of the new ponds. Add in Salem, the Hooded Vulture that Holly has just got flying free and next year looks like we will have some very special birds for the demonstrations.