Saturday 21 February 2015

Soon to come!
I think one of the saddest and most frustrating things about me personally getting old is that my singing voice is no longer what it was. It was never as good as I would have hoped, I always wanted to be a soloist opera singer and singing was very important to me. In reality my voice was never good enough and my disposition was too nervous to sing publically (believe it or not!) as I found to my cost. But to be able to sing along with records (OK CD’s these days) or carol sing at Christmas, was a joy. Now I hear the songs in my head but hardly dare open my mouth as the noise is not the controlled steady voice I used to have I sound like a choir boy who's voice is breaking, – it’s sad and frustrating. I wonder if I practised it would come back, but that is unlikely to happen I suspect.
 
The last two owls evenings went really well, although it was damp on the Friday we managed to get away with both the outside guided tours and the outside flying demonstration. The birds did superbly. Blizzard our young female Snowy Owl really is coming on a treat. We are working with Drift the male, and he is nearly back to being able to do demonstrations, once there we will give Blizzard a well deserved rest to moult and be ready for next late autumn. We gave a total of 540 people a really good evening over the nine evenings we ran, and it was lovely to hear the nice comments at the end of each of them.
 
We are now almost at the end of half term and we have been busy apart from one day when it was dreadful weather. Lots of kids and grandparents, and all of them seemed to have a good time, we were lucky with the weather today, the storm of hail came between the two demonstrations and we still managed to get every bird flown. The weather for tomorrow does not look great, cold and dry to start with but then storms coming in.
 
The breeding season moves on, the baby vulture is back with mum and dad and doing well, one of the Grey Buzzard Eagles went back with mum but did not survive the other one is doing well and is a monster. The Brahminy Kites laid an egg on the bath ledge which survived and is in the incubator, we have to rethink an aviary for them now as she can no longer get to the nest ledge in Barn two. The Hooded vulture egg is going OK we think and we await other eggs as time goes on.
 
The pups are doing OK, I try to keep Nightshade as quiet as possible which is not easy, Agapanthus continues to eat and chew everything in sight. I was a little horrified when he tried to chew a FULL bottle of wine, phew, thank goodness he failed, although opening the screw top lid may be a challenge in the future. The other dogs are fine and so relieved that we are open again and have visitors and the CAFE!!!
 
At the end of this month we get out some of the flying team, so Karis will be back on duty and Hare, and as long as it dries out, the burrowing owls as well.
 
Spring is on the way! Oh and we are going to run a competition to design a new Logo, see our Facebook page (don't ask me I have no idea how to get onto it) for details. Holly has put in her first effort - it is not going to win!
 
 

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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