NEWSLETTER NO 8 LATE SPRING 2010 Edited by Jemima Parry-Jones MBE
INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR BIRDS OF PREY NEWENT, GLOS, GL18 1JJ EMAIL JPJ@ICBP.ORG
WWW.ICBP.ORG
WEBLOG - www.jpjweblog.blogspot.com
NATURE IS THE BANK ON WHICH ULTIMATELY ALL CHEQUES ARE DRAWN
Spring It was a cold cold start to spring, and although it was particularly dry, which it really was, except of course for Easter, which was needless to say the only damp part of the spring, we had a north wind for much of the time and that really did make things on the cool side here. Consequently Spring was late, but that was sort of ’right’. We had a proper au-
tumn, glorious weather and wonderful autumn colours, a proper winter, cold and snow, and a late but proper spring, so it did follow on in the right fashion as it were. Everyone, staff and volunteers worked so hard over the winter, with Mike Turners help we did the whole of the drainage of the paths, which means that no longer does the top surface of the paths end up in the field every time it rains, which is great, I need to top the paths, but that will take time as we need 215 tons of fine gravel and that is expensive. The snow in January and February slowed down work and also bird training and flying, but we got there and for a short time the snow was fun. But did get a little old as time went on!
Adam, Simon and I built a snowman who got a list to starboard and fell over after four days and a snow dog, who did well for a day and then his head fell off! The snow was very beautiful, but held up work amazingly, and made caring for and particularly flying the birds very difficult so nice and wintry that it was we were not sorry to see it go in the end. We had three different falls and the last one took ages to go. Holly got very annoyed though because every time it did snow she could not get in to work so she missed the building of the various snow sculptures!! I think she did see the dog before its head fell off though.
So What Have We Achieved so Far ?? Well apart from the drainage of the paths which was vital but not very visible or exciting Charlie came down in January, we stripped the shop and he built new shelving and storage for the shop items, I had always wanted to do the idea that we carried out and it seems to work well and looks good. We painted the shop and by sheer chance chose a colour that was pretty much identical to the one it was before, not sure how that happened, if you had wanted to match the paint you could not have got closer if you tried, I didn’t want to match it, but it looks good but was a nightmare to paint as you could not see where you had been! The new carpet came in with help from David in Newent who does all our carpets and it finished off the place, the only thing left to do now is the electrics, but I keep finding other things for Richard to do on that front. We also had the carpets in the café professionally cleaned although I have to say I am not sure that was a howling success. To add to concerns the walk in deep freeze that we have (had) in the freezer shed finally died on us. I could not afford to put in a new one, so we moved over to commercial chest freezers, which feels like a step backwards I have to say, but seems to be working and has certainly reduced the electricity bill. How‐ ever we could have done without the expense at this point. Then outside I have been very concerned about the Hawk Walk being open at the far end, it used to be a closed courtyard area which kept foxes and the like out but the avi‐ aries and fence had been removed in my absence leaving the birds in the Hawk Walk very exposed. There was a very tatty aviary at the end, so we got to work. Mike Turner worked out all the levels and how we were going to achieve what I wanted it to look like and we laid the foundations and brickwork on the old site. The frosts did not help, but we managed. The walls are timber and the last of the feather edging and plywood from Eardisland and I did have to buy some more plywood to finish it off. Travis Perkins have been great in helping us as have Total Plas‐ tics in Ledbury. It was finished by about March and gave us five new enclosures, and most importantly one for Mozart, who loves being back where he belongs. We then moved onto the weighing room, our old one, apart from feeling soiled by the previ‐
ous staff, desperately needed to be updated, redone and enlarged, so as we had gained, or more correctly re‐gained five enclosures, we sacrificed two of the flying aviaries and added them to the old weighing room. It has made a huge difference and means that when we have experience days and courses, there is room to move in there. And it is really neat and tidy!
David and Mark Kay sponsored not only all the Verreaux’s Eagles, but also all the new signs, which are now up on the aviaries and looking great, its such a pleasure to have jobs like that done, and adds to the place in a very important way. Our old signs were home made and too small to read. I worked on the design over Christmas, and it was amazing to see them all up and in place, they look wonderful. New task in that line is to redo the Education Room, but that will be a job for later in the year. So what else, new speaker boxes are up in the flying ground, I wanted to put them nearer the benches, and we put in a base but then the speaker man said that the old position was the best, so we turned the new base into two flower beds—now planted and Mike built two new ones a little bit away from the existing ones. The new roof is going on the stables to replace the completely rotten one, which will be a relief, and means we can consider (0nly consider ‐ Richard!!) moving some of the workshop down there.. I suspect we are going to have to completely re do the loos this winter damn it, not a job I want to take on, but I think it might be forced upon us. My neighbours sheep came to stay for a bit be‐ cause we finished fencing the field, oh and we planted 400 beech hedge plants too, Good Lord we have been busy!!! However the sheep or rather the lambs kept getting out and eating the new hedge so they had to go again. We are still working and moving forward, and it shows!!
New Birds Spring, or early spring is not the time for new birds, however we were given a beautiful new young Bald Eagle by Avifauna, a bird park in Holland, so Adam and John (volunteer) drove to Holland in early February to collect her. She came back via Eurostar, which was nice and they did a pretty good trip. She had been with the parents for nearly a year, so she is well adjusted. Now in early June she is fully trained and flying well, she is of course in juvenile plumage which tends to throw some visitors as they think of a Bald Eagle having the white head. However that does not come through fully until the birds are about five years old. So over the years you will be able to see Cremorne (that is her name) change from juvenile to sub adult and then on into adult plumage, and hopefully improve over the years. She is a very focused lady and fun to work with. What a lot of people don’t know is that many of the feathers actually turn white over time, rather than being moulted out and coming back white, it will be good to record this over the years with photos of her as she matures.
We are also training three new owls right now. I have Darcy Spice, who is a male Great Horned Owl with a charming personality and a very laid back nature, Adam has Gypsy King, a Spectacled Owl, who is very pretty and very ambitious at large jumps, he also trained Saturn, an African Spotted Eagle Owl, who was a bit of a surprise as we thought it was an Indian Eagle Owl to start off with! He is now a fully fledged member of the team, the other two are still at the non flying stage. Holly had a lovely Ural Owl called Bosbury Pippin, he was great, really tame, charming, very very active and loved by all, especially Holly, very sadly he got some sort of nasty bacterial infection and literally we noted he was not feeding or looking well on the day and he died before Holly even got him to Neil Forbes that evening, it was horrifically quick. Holly is going to have another Ural as we have a second clutch and hopefully the next one will be just as wonderful and not get an infection. We have two baby Burrowing Owls who will perhaps join the team, and that will do for owls for this year, it will certainly give us plenty of scope for the Owl Evenings starting in Octo-
ber. I am very excited about those because Richard (probably unwisely!) mentioned lights and dimmers and lighting trees and so forth, and so………………. But it will really add to the experience of the owls flying at night Richard, it really will!
THE BREEDING SEASON I am relieved and I think that Simon is as well that although our breeding season was not a good one, a number of people whom we have spoken to have had problems as well. It was very late to start with and those birds that did lay early we had huge problems with the eggs because of the extreme cold. Simon went to India in February, which did not help, but was really important for the vulture project. Speaking of which we have a beautiful baby, well OK, not so baby Eurasian Griffon Vulture. Simon hatched the second egg, and at three weeks old we put it back, it was a joy to behold as the mother was immediately there and fending off the other interested vultures, brooding it and feeding it, Simon went in a few times to five extra feeds, but they soon got the idea and did a great job. I hope that we might be able to fly the young bird and am going to ask a friend of mine who has trained a number of vultures to come down and assess the best way to get some flying from it. None of my Lanners laid which was disappointing, so we are going to have a switch round this autumn, because I was not allowed the diary which gave us the records for the birds in South Carolina, I could not remember which bird was paired with which and that could have caused the problem. However our younger female Verreaux’s Eagle laid and she has a great pair bond with the male from Los Angeles Zoo, sadly she broke the egg, but it bodes well for the
future. We lost various other eggs as well, but our real triumph was our first Steller’s Sea Eagle! Only one egg, but it was fertile, they were amazing at the incubation, we took the egg late on and left them with a wooden one. Simon hatched the egg, I don’t know how many hours he was up with it, but he did it! The chick reared well and we decided that we must try and get them to rear it. It was a hairy moment putting the chick back as both parents were very defensive, but it worked as you can see by the wonderful picture of it being reared by mum. Dad is a great parent too and hopefully this will lead to more young in the future as this is a Red List species. We are going to fly the young bird (help!) and then put it in for breeding once it is adult. I don’t really approve of Red List species being used for demonstration if they can be in a breeding project. So from the sublime to the very common we also have one (so far) baby Yellow-billed Kite just hatched and that too will join the team later in the year.
Losses With the gains of the breeding season also comes losses, the down side of keeping living creatures. We lost both the very old African White-backed Vulture and the also very old Ruppell's Vulture, both in their late 30’s. So my Lappet-faced Vulture now lives alone until we can find her a mate. I miss the two old birds as they had been through a lot with us. I send Caffrey the hybrid vulture off with Andy Reeve, he trained and flew Caffrey’s brother and did well with him and Caffrey had never been nice to any other vulture because he had been hand reared, so I am delighted that he is on flying demonstrations in Lincolnshire and doing very well, which is good for him. We lost Stinger, the lovely little male Kestrel that we flew last year in the cold and one of the Hobby’s as well, the Hobby was at least six, which is not a bad age I suppose. And of course Bosbury Pippin. We had a scare with Real the Condor, who came down with egg binding and had to have the condor equivalent of a hysterectomy! However she pulled through and although Simon and I ended up with several bites while trying to persuade her to have her medicine, she is now fine again and managed to put a large hold in Adam’s trousers when he collected some of her moulted feathers and she felt he should not!
INJURED WILD BIRDS To my surprise we did not have a huge influx of injured, or emaciated birds in over the winter. Actually to my relief as well because we desperately need to totally rebuild our hospital as we are very short on space and good facilities. I expected to see reasonably large numbers with the extreme cold in December and then the snow, why we did not I don’t know, but I suspect that more probably died than were found, and that after the first flush of snow, less people were out and so able to find them. We certainly saw less wild buzzards this year than last once spring arrived. We have had in only two young Tawny Owls in comparison to seven last year, one young Little Owl who we are not sure doesn’t have a head in‐ jury, he is much tamer than I would expect. We had a female Sparrowhawk which actually laid an egg in the box she arrived in and was being at‐ tacked by magpies. She recovered and went as did the Tawny Owl with a broken wing found behind the Centre. As usual some of the injured wild birds did not sur‐ vive, but one we were dubious about has done well. This bird was the female peregrine from Sy‐ monds Yat who was brought in with a hugely swol‐ len head, and looking very miser‐ able. She had been attacked by a new younger female and lost. I have rarely seen a bird in such shock, and Neil diagnosed a puncture to the back of her eye through her ear! However she recovered amaz‐ ingly and rather than release her here we sent her up with Charlie Heap to be trained and flown to make sure that all was well and because if we had released her here she would have flown straight back to Symonds Yat and possibly have been killed this time. Charlie is flying her now, she has taken three crows so far, with minimum effort, (she is an old and very experienced bird!) and he is going to release her once the young in the wild have
fledged and territories drop. We wish her well—she needs to retire from breeding now! We were also able to release the buzzard chick that came in last year, he went in the spring, although we tried him here, eventu‐ ally we had to send him further away as he tried to help with the demonstrations and it was not helpful in the least!
Easter Egg Hunt, volunteers and staff The usual mayhem happened at Easter with our Easter egg race, its always fun
and with three new dogs all young and one very young to assist, it makes for a good handicap and slows people down. Joan’s mother Iloana had sent me a huge chocolate egg earlier and so I put it up as the prize, I note the prize winner did not share it out!!! Our Days here vary greatly, sometimes it is hectic as hell, and others not so bad. Sometimes we have a ton of volunteers and other days none, but we always stop for coffee and lunch and as you can see, it
can be relaxing, and there is often a baby owl joining us, its hiding behind John in this picture.. We did not do any spe‐ cial events last year as the place was in such a mess, but I promise to try and do a few this year. We did fi‐ nally man‐ age to have
our Guy Fawkes night—on Easter Monday!! It should have been November 5th but it rained pretty much every weekend, so we left it and celebrated in our neighbours field with a great bonfire and fireworks on a wonderful evening with great light and good company, the only thing I blew was not enough mulled wine—ah well!!
COURSES We have done remarkable well on the five day courses in the last 18 months, everyone has been full, which is wonderful to see, and makes taking the time out of other work worth while. We now stop until October because we are just too busy during the summer months.
We have instigated to new days, or to be more accurate half days., both on the photo-
graphic days and the experience days. They seem to be going well and are an advantage to us as it means we can catch up with birds in the afternoon, rather than be tied to the course. They are of course cheaper, which in these days of cuts is good and we are also taking children on them because the time frame is enough that they can concentrate enough for half a day.
I have stopped the three day Owl Course as there is not enough take up and if people want to learn about owls they can actually do so better on the five day course. We are also looking at the photography weekend because there is not enough take up on that either and I am going to change it and the off site day for three special days—Spring, Summer and Autumn off site, which I think will work well.
Odds and Sods I have often worried that people don’t know how wonderful the Centre is when standing by the entrance, so I decided to do something about it. I designed this sign, or at least the concept of the sign, and Severn Print finished off the job for me, it looks wonderful and shows all what they are likely to see if they come in. At the same time I looked at it and thought—this would make a great new leaflet—and it does, so that is now doing the rounds, which I hope will bring in more people. We have had the four films that we made in September for Autumn Watch shown (at least two so far) on Spring Watch, plus Simon was on with the Hobby as well. We have also done some filming for the One Show with Alexandria the peregrine, we got the Most Amazing slow motion of her taking off and in flight, I am looking forward to seeing the result. I will try my best to organise at least one summer event this year, so watch the website as that is where I will advertise it. Puppies are growing well, staff are great, volunteers are wonderful and the weather has been just perfect for most of the year with more to come and a lovely summer to boot! For up to date information on the Centre
keep
up
with the Weblog.