I am sort of guessing that most of you will have learnt by now that we have closed the doors at the International Centre for Birds of Prey for the last time to the general public. BUT this is not the end of ICBP, the charity, the conservation work that we do or me.... oh no!

Actually I suspect that few of our visitors really know what conservation work we do because we have never been very good at boasting about it. But we should have boasted, and we should be proud of the conservation work that we have done and will still be doing.

I have had so many emails and messages since we put out the notice that we were closing. As far as I know, bearing in mind that I don't actually follow facebook or twitter or whatever, but as far as I have been told, there has not been one unpleasant comment. Which is not only very nice and heart warming, but very different from some of the appalling comments put on things like the falconry forum when I came back from the US. For those of you lovely people who put the unpleasant ones up - I still have them and will eventually find
out who you are!!!

I have been proud to hear from so many people who having been here regularly, volunteered here or worked here who said that the Centre changed their lives and their direction in life. That is great to know. I am proud of the work done with thousands of injured wild birds of prey that have come through the hospital here and many have had a second chance back in the wild. I am proud of the educational work that we have done in the last almost 55 years, and known that many of our visitors have left with a far greater appreciation of birds of prey. I am proud of the work that we have done and will still be doing in India and Nepal on Vulture Conservation. I am proud of all the various conservation projects we have helped all over the world. And I am proud that we will be continuing much of the more private work on into the future in the charity.

I am very proud of the way the staff are dealing with us closing and the amazing volunteers who are sad and dissapointed that we will no longer be here in about six months, but who are prepared still to come and help us, even down to the last few birds.

Most of the staff have already applied for new jobs and we have had a number of people ask if they are available! Many of the birds have been offered new homes and once we are out of the surveillance zone we will get them settled in their new homes. Adam and Holly are getting organised for the move to Wales and the vultures will go with them. I now have to find a new property that will fit the bill so that I, the dogs, about 10 birds, hopefully a new and safe horse (!) - a smaller one!! can have a good life, continue some conservation breeding programmes that we are involved in and have less pressure as well. I will have one member of staff to help me, who I hope will not mind caring for the dogs if I have to go abroad. Not found him or her yet either!

So things are moving on. I am just looking forward to getting some of this done so I can actually have a nights sleep that does not start at 4.00am!

 I am glad to be back, I should have kept up with this blog and just have not either got round to it or had time. Its four years, where does the time go?

Life has changed so much in the last few years, not just because of Covid, although that has had a huge effect. As for Brexit, what a travesty, and I wonder how many people now regret either not voting or voting to go without understanding the results!

 So apart from Brexit and Covid, what else has happened, we have had two Cafe managers, both of whom now have other jobs, one because of Covid and one because he did not drive and so getting to work was pretty tricky. We have had a number of different bird staff, these days people tend not to stay long in jobs. I was talking to a friend of mine who runs a company of over a hundred employees and he said the same thing. People do about two years and then move on. It is a hugely different philosophy than it was when I was younger. We have had three gardeners, Rob left to go self employed, the second one decided he did not like working outside or alone (!) and sadly the third one was lost because of Covid, as indeed were Jan and Mary from the shop. Covid has an awful lot to answer for.

We had a new water main put in and the lawn it had to go across has now recovered thank goodness. Apparently we also resurfaced the carpark, which I can vaguely remember.

A pair of buzzards have been nesting in an oak tree in our flying field for the last three years and they are a bit of a pain because they beat up any bird apart from falcons that go anywhere near the tree. They beat up our birds and the crows beat them up!

We have run two Incubation Courses again with Susie Kasielke from Los Angles, the last one we finished and Susie got home Just before Covid hit and the world closed down. Neil Forbes ran a couple first aid and husbandry courses for us in 2018 as well, which was incredibly kind of him.

We ran a Vulture Harnessing Workshop in August 2019 in the Education room, it went very well, and we had people from South and North America, Africa, Portugal, Spain, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Scotland and England. Much was learnt and discussed, and the workshop although not a money making venture, continued the work of putting ICBP on the world map for conservation. During the workshop, Benbecula the Steller’s Sea-eagle went AWOL, his telemetry came off and we were reliant on Facebook to get sightings, although you would think that an eagle that size (huge) would be easily spotted. However after chasing many fruitless reports, we finally got a good report and he was seen sitting on the winners post at Chepstow Racecourse! He was very pleased to see Holly when they got there.

We had our five yearly Zoo inspection in November 2018 and then the three yearly one in 2021. We passed both without too much to get done. They get harder and as I write we are now awaiting the new Secretary of States Standards in Zoos, which will go out to consultation once DEFRA get them out. I doubt if anything we say in the consultation will be taken any notice of because it never has been. It

looks like tethering birds in zoos is likely to be banned. If it is across the board and we are not allowed to tether parent reared birds for training purposes it will be a disgrace because trying to train parent reared birds free lofted is far far more stressful for the bird. I don't know who the 'experts' were who have decided this, but there is no doubt at all that they are not expert in training birds of prey.

We closed for Covid along with everyone else, but managed to get most of the Owl Evenings done. However at the end of last year (2021) we did have to cancel the last one because our cafe manager came down with Covid. We have changed the format to a much better one, but then had to change it again because of Avian Influenza which has been the worst outbreak the country has known.

Because of the AI for the last two winters we have had to stop taking in injured wild birds of prey, which is really hard to do, I hate turning them away, but the risk to the collection is too high.

I have not travelled anywhere since 2020. I did go to the Raptor Research Foundation Conference in South Africa in November 2018, which was good and I travelled to India and Nepal as usual, and again in 2019, but have gone nowhere abroad since for obvious reasons. I suspect that those conservation trips will probably start again this year (2022).

Over the last four years we have lost a few birds, we had all our Pigmy Falcons die, we still have not discovered the reason, but I suspect a virus coming in with the food. Last year my beautiful Red Kite Muckle Roe dropped dead in the air while I was flying her. A good way for her to go but a hell of a shock for me. This year we lost Karis my beloved and amazing Saker Falcon whom many people has seen in his spectacular stoops, and Lambrusco our second oldest Yellow Billed Kite. We also lost our lovely Barn Owl which was a big loss for us all. We do now have a lovely pair of Secretary Birds who I hope will breed.

We did a number lectures at Malvern Theatre in '18 and '19 thanks to Nic Lloyd, they were pretty good and it was incredibly kind of his to host them.

But we did have to cancel the last six day falconry course because of Covid, we have not done one since either. 

We made some big changes to the Centre during Covid, we moved the Cafe to the shop so it was more accessible to people passing by. We had no shop for a while but moved some of to the Pavillion in the flying field last summer. We have reduced the collection, sending five vultures to Bulgaria one Saker falcon and four Lesser Kestrels for their conservation breeding programmes. Five of our African White-backed vultures have gone to a lovely huge aviary at Longleat. We have enlarged a number of the aviaries which look great and give the birds more room and have emptied Barn 2 which needs to be taken down.

We moved on almost all the birds from the Lendrum case (illegal birds brought in as eggs from South Africa). And we have had to cut back on the breeding because it is much more difficult to find good homes for the young and so it is wrong to try and breed them.

I think that gets you all pretty much up to date. We did lose a beautiful and very old Turkey Oak in
storm Arwen. It had been condemned by the tree survey man, but I still hated to see it down. Luckily it did not do too much damage and our insurers the NFU have been brilliant about it.

All the dogs are well except that Sorrel has dog dementia which means she barks alot and gets confused easily. But otherwise apart from Flax deciding she wanted to live to Holly instead of me, they are well.