Wednesday 27 December 2017
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.

Having fed the birds on Christmas day with help from David who comes over to help  that day, I had a coffee and did a few things and then went out to Christmas lunch with my friend Alice and her family. It was delicious! The only down side of not doing your own turkey is that you don't get cold turkey the following days! However not having to cook one is a huge bonus, actually I probably would not do it anyway.
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!



0 comments:

Hello

I have to say that keeping a weblog can at times become compulsive and at other times a chore. Sometimes I am berrated for not keeping it up and sometimes I get wonderful comments from people who follow the news of the Centre.

It is fun to share the daily goings on here, some good and some bad, some funny and some sad, but all a part of our daily lives.
And as I said before its a pretty cool to be here and it is a great place to visit, you should try coming and watching the birds and meeting the staff and of course the dogs.

An interesting video on Lead

An interesting video on Lead

I find it staggering that people who want to hunt don't see the value in changing their ammunition from lead to a safer product. We have stopped using lead in petrol, in paint, in our water pipes, but they still want to use lead - ah well, apparently eating it not only kills birds but leads to reduced intelligence in humans......................

NO ONE is asking you to stop legal and genuine hunting, they are just asking you to change your ammunition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHZGQ8i8AwI

HC

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