9 years

At this time of year I always tend to look back. At the beginning of April 2002 Strathblane Falconry was created. We have been going for 9 years. It is a bit scary to look back and think 9 years. It doesn't feel like 9 years. The time has flown in (no pun intended). There has been a lot of good and some bad times over the years and I have some times wondered why do I do it. After all I do tend to work a 7 day week with days in the summer lasting about 10 hours while in the winter I can be working (especially the last 2) in sub zero temperatures but to be honest I wouldn't and don't want to change it. I am very lucky to have this as my living and the birds remind me of that every day.

Anyway back to last week, the present and the start of year 10.

The last week has been a bit quiet. I suspect the calm before the school holidays start in April. This week I had only 3 bookings 2 of which were on Wednesday and the other was there this morning. All of them were at Cameron House. All 3 were hawk walks  and were uneventful in the fact Pele and Oran both flew well on Wednesday. Pele in his calculated easy going style and Oran in his high energy (well high energy for a Harris Hawk) style. The lady who flew Pele in the first session on Wednesday was almost brought to tears by Pele flying to her out-stretched arm. She found the whole experience quite emotional. Oran today was on form looking for something to catch in the woods behind the hotel.

The rest of the week has been spent flying birds in between the rain showers. Saying that I have been able to get the birds flown every day apart from this afternoon due to it raining all afternoon. The rain stopped when I was getting ready to finish for the day. 

It has been great to be able to get some good quality time in with some of the birds. Brel (male Harris Hawk) has been doing well. His fitness is slowly getting better in the fact that he is flying about half a mile a day. He starts really well and then you can see him slow down but he is getting there. The 2 falcons Sanda (Lanner) and Uist (Lugger) are both going well. I was able to get them out on the farm where I can push them a bit more as it alot more open. On Saturday Jo came out with me and flew Uist. As there was 2 of us we were able to take some pictures as well of the falcons flying.

Sanda swooping in

Sanda turning towards me

Uist coming in to the lure

Uist flying over head

The only real problem I had was yesterday when I was flying Brel. At 1 point he wasn't for moving out of his
tree. I was going to walk away and try and get him to follow on but something about his body language made me look back. This time he was standing on the ground. When I saw this I was thinking - what's his problem. I walked back to him and I could see he was holding something. This is not good, the last thing you want is the bird finding something it thinks it can eat and then carry up into a tree to eat. What he had in his feet he could carry up into a tree. I slowly walked towards him and got out a large piece of food to get his attention. As soon as he saw the large piece of food on the glove he flew to the glove carrying what he found with him and was thinking about eating. What he had was a mole that had been dead for a while so was very rotten and didn't smell to good. Thankfully I was able to get it off him quickly and hide it. Once it was out of sight we moved on quickly and  carried on with flying. It was 1 of the more glamorous moments that you get when working with birds of prey -NOT.

The coming is quite busy. I have a VIP booking tomorrow for a group of French journalists tomorrow. Wednesday I am stuck in the centre as my car is in the garage due to the exhaust coming loose, Thursday morning is booked up, Friday is near enough fully booked and the weekend is a bit nuts. So a busy week. The last 2 weeks have been calm and now I suspect we enter the storm with the diary filling up nicely.

We also picked up another corporate event for the start of May today which was great.

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