Its a lovely day, the birds are starting to lay, the wild daffodils are coming out and I am beginning to get the hang of Photo Shop, although I would not say that it is user friendly.

My kitchen is now finished, we knocked down a wall into the Butler's pantry which was a room that I never used apart from to put 'stuff' (i.e. a junk room) and I don't like untidy junk rooms. We use the kitchen for meetings etc, so it was nice to get it larger. The dust had to be seen to be believed, you could have used a plough on top of the cooker!!

Which reminds me - I am singularly and I mean singularly unimpressed by Range Master. Their staff need customer relations training, they are not particularly pleasant and as for their speed in repairs - all I can say is I will not be buying Anything from them again. My new cooker arrived before Christmas, I did not use it straight away as my old (very old!) saucepans would not work. When I did, the hob does not work properly. I finally got hold of Range master in January - is the cooker fixed - is it buggery. They sent two technicians once with the wrong part and I have seen or heard from them not once since, that makes it two months. The bloody guarantee will run out before they fix it at this rate. Don't buy from Range Master!!!!


Agapanthus has just walked in with a dog bowl, he throws them around in the kitchen which is particularly noisy and then puts them in my office or on the lawn which makes finding them interesting. He pulled the pen jar off the window sill last night and chewed all the pens, why he has not died of something dreadful in his tummy I do not know. He is without doubt the worst chewer I have ever had and has no conscience about it either.

The new Osprey from Bulgaria is wonderful, he is a charming person. He only has half a wing on one side, we don't know how he was injured, and we keep changing his perching so that we get it right for him, we are nearly there. He was very difficult to get to feed - they often are - the team in Bulgaria suggested live fish, but that is not legal in the UK, and anyway I suspect the public would not like it. However Holly had an idea, so I got a pump for a fish tank and we put it in a shallow dish and then injected air into some dead fish from the supermarket so they floated. The pump moved the water so the fish moved round in the bowl and hey presto Osprey feeding!!! It is lovely to have him here and now we need to find him a wife so I can achieve one of my dreams of breeding Ospreys!

We also were sent an Imperial Eagle - also injured, she is eating but not settle enough to be round people as yet.

Of course we have to have sustenance to help her!

We are going to put in a new path next week and use the turf to redo the top lawn in the Hawk Walk, if it works I may think about taking some turf off the horse field (as I don't have a horse sadly) for the middle lawn. To buy it would be over £1000 which I really don't want to do at this time of the year. However it is all weather reliant which has not been very helpful recently.

Helen MA has been working like a Trojan (I wonder if they did work hard?) on the Little Owl nest
box scheme and we now have 16 up in orchards in Herefordshire and a little of Gloucestershire, so we are over half way on our target and she only started on February 19th to put them up. They are cracking boxes, far better than any other design. One of the huge advantages we have over people who only work with wild birds is that we have a far greater understanding of what birds need when they breed, hence the large and posh design and we are confident that it will work. Be careful if you do buy nest boxes some are appallingly badly designed with no idea of what the birds really need.

Here is hoping that we have a wonderful Easter with thousands of nice customers to start the year well.