Winter is here

In my last post i mentioned that it looked like winter was here. Well it is official. We have had 2 nights of frost and I have looked out the thermals for work. I don't do bad weather - there is no such thing, just the wrong clothing. While we have had frost at night the days the been bright and sunny which has been great. The birds are taking the change in the weather in there stride and even though it has been frosty it is not cold enough to cause any serious problems.

There hasn't been a lot happening in the centre over the last week. There have been bookings most days but it has not been that busy. No big bookings and we haven't really been travelling about to do any events at different locations. The last week has been between the Scottish half term holiday week and the English half term holiday week. It has almost been a lull in bookings.

The coming week on the other hand looked reasonably quiet at 9am this morning with nothing booked for today tomorrow or Wednesday morning. That changed by 11am this morning. We picked up a hawk walk, 2 more bookings tomorrow and 1 on Wednesday morning. It is safe to say I am nearly fully booked this week but I was kind of half expecting it to do this. I also have my first school visit of the new school year on Thursday. The school visits are always good fun and a real change to the routine

The birds are all flying well so while the coming week is busy there shouldn't be any real challenges. 1 more busy week and then things will quieten down a bit. November tends to quieten down for the birds so I will reduce the number of birds flying a bit more but it can be very busy for me with the run in for Christmas.

Even though things are busy in the centre I try not to let this stop me working with the birds and improving the team. I have been bringing Artemis the Steppe Eagle's weight down. Now I would like to point out that
I am not a big fan of eagles. Don't get me wrong they are stunning but they are hard work. Every thing about them is hard work. They are big heavy strong and that can be just the eagles personality. You are also have to be really careful where you fly them. They will not think twice about taking cats and dogs so there is a real responsibility in flying an eagle. In the past I have always flown Artemis to the lure dropped on the ground but this year I am trying to get her to fly to the glove which is hard work as I have never asked her to do this before and she sometimes struggles to land on the glove and doesn't seem that sure what she is meant to do. Once I have her flying a bit more confidently I will introduce the dummy bunny and get her chasing this to build up her fitness a bit

Getting weighed

Going back to T perch

Coming to glove