Another Christmas over for another year, I had a pleasant and peaceful one with some very nice presents. We went carol singing last thursday and raised £180 for a local hospice which was good. I also sang in the carol concert earlier and went to the Christmas Carol service up in the village. So I have had plenty of carols, which I love. I have had charge of the birds since last Saturday, the staff all come back on the 2nd, although Holly and Adam are around and about. Holly helped me feed today.
I came back to check the birds and take the dogs for a walk which they are insistant about at this time of the year. Although poor Briza is struggling now she is so close to having puppies. She also gets me up at 3.00am every morning as she can't go through the night now!

The trained owls have been delighted to have a few days off, Hemp is starting to come into breeding condition so she will not come back on duty, Yorkley will take her place for the 2018 early Owl Evenings, I don't think he has done one yet, so that could be interesting!
We had a sprinkling of snow on the field this morning and the Malverns which I can see out of my office window are a glistening white. I am not sorry we did not have more as it does make feeding round much more difficult, although it also makes us appreciate the golf carts even more when we can't use them.


We are now looking forward to the breeding season starting, which should be the African White backed Vultures first of all, at least they were first last year.We now have six here which gives us good choice for breeding. Very sadly the male White-headed vulture who came here died very suddenly, we are not sure of the cause but he did it the day he was supposed to have a cateract operation. I am not sure it they really help a bird, I had Mozart done years ago and I don't think it made an appreciable difference to his ability to get round his aviary. This vulture would never have been suitable for breeding anyway, so our female will have to wait a little for a potential husband.

We have switched the merlins around, and I hope they will do something, we have also split up the Steppe Eagles hoping that absence will make the heart grow fonder, They have not laid fertile eggs for several years now and I would really like them to start breeding again,  particularly as they have recently been uplisted as Endangered in the wild now.

I am still struggling with the new microsoft 365, which I still consider to be crap. The new Outlook has no spell check, I can't find anything. I have to download anything to read it and I think the people who wrote the programme should be fed to my vultures. Other than that - I hate it!